Final Whistle

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Rugby's running game seems like a memory

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Imagine a publisher signing a writer like Richard Ford to a three-book deal, then telling him to forget about those long, languid sentences and write punchier. Or a promoter snaring Bruce Springsteen, only to insist he limit himself to Barry Manilow covers. This kind of shackling of talent is what defined the Rugby World Cup, which ended with the unlikely England–South Africa final in Paris on Oct. 20. As frustrating a tournament as many would care to recall — up there with the worst of the soccer World Cups and their goal-less, gamesmanship-ridden ordeals — the event proved that rugby is sick and needs help.

It's not the players' fault. Their fervor in France was the Cup's saving grace. Lined up before matches, imbibing their anthems, most looked ready and able to astonish with honed athleticism. Alas, rugby these days teases but seldom delivers. Its laws prevent even the most gifted players from showing more than a fraction of what they can do. No longer a showcase for sweeping back-line play, creativity or deft passing and handling, the game has become maddeningly disjointed and dull. And except for those fans who are satisfied with endless collisions and messy contests for the ball, everyone knows it.

Bravo, underestimated England, who played some terrific rugby. But what does that mean nowadays? It means they disrupted the opposition's flow of ball and destroyed their scrum. It means they kicked judiciously for position and accurately for goal. Only in parts of the game that hold little appeal for the average spectator could England be rated superior to the All Blacks, who crashed out in the quarter-finals.

Rugby people are rightly proud of their sport. Compared to its closest relative, rugby league, the game has a genuine international presence and a certain sophistication to its forward play. At least in theory, it's also less predictable. But as a spectacle, league has left it for dead.

Rugby's decline can be traced to the advent of professionalism in the mid-1990s. The rugby pitch has always been crowded, with 30 players and almost no space between the teams. That there was once a stronger link between enterprising attack and tries was largely due to the fact that the amateur players of yesteryear would tire to an extent that today's pros — bigger, faster, fitter — don't. Imagine rugby league adding two extra players to each side and changing the 10-m rule to a 0-m rule. The resultant stalemate would be a guide to what's happening now in rugby.

Rugby's guardians could open up play by requiring the defensive line at rucks and mauls to stand 5 m further back than it does now. That's a bigger change to the laws than many diehards could cope with, but a lot more tinkering is needed — more than is contained in the so-called Experimental Law Variations that Australia is advocating. Rugby gives the defending side every chance to get out of trouble, to push play away from the attacking zones and back toward center field for more tedious slog. It's time to seal some of the escape hatches. The options of kicking out on the full from, and calling "mark" within, one's own 22-m zone need to be abolished. So does the nonsense of allowing players to touch down a kick that they've gathered in their in-goal and head to the 22-m line for a clearance. The kick that leaves a player trapped in his in-goal is a good one and should be rewarded with a 5-m scrum, and the feed.

England's Jonny Wilkinson is brave in defense, obsessive by nature but composed when it counts, and, of course, a deadeye. But the fact he was a star of the tournament while his Kiwi counterpart, Daniel Carter — who has every skill a No. 10 could wish for — disappeared without trace says much about where rugby is. The game's crying out for less kicking and more running. A radical idea: except where foul play has occurred, penalty kicks at goal should be permitted only from within the opposition 22. (And league has it right with its single-point field goal, used as a deadlock breaker rather than a means of accumulating points when the attack has conked out.)

Reducing the number of shots at goal would help curb the influence of the referees. The last six weeks confirmed that too many of them think they're the most important guy on the field. It's one thing to maintain control, quite another to look for reasons to blow the pea out of the whistle in a sport that lacks flow at the best of times. A rugby revival depends on convincing the top whistleblowers that a Test match isn't the time to show off their grasp of every obscure law in the book. You don't halt a Springsteen concert because the man sang "ain't," do you?