Stewart's solution to kicking plague
Dave Stewart, versatile Springbok back of the 1960s, was recently interviewed by John Maytham of the radio station Cape Talk and spoke of his solution to the kicking plaguing rugby at present. He makes four pints.
I have been involved in rugby in some form or another for more than 60 years and have watched the game being slowly destroyed by the mindless kicking that robs us, who love the game, of the original ethic of skilful passing, handling and scoring tries.
All the modern laws - 10m back from line-outs 5m back from scrums - forwards remaining bound until ball out - have been created to give the backs room to move but have succeeded only in creating a monster at fly-half who uses up this space.
On Saturday I watched three games, my grandson playing Under-16B, then Wynberg Under-19 playing Sacs and Western Province playing the Lions. All these games were ruined by incessant kicking. We all complain about this but no one that I know of is doing anything positive to improve the situation.
Here is my offering:
1. Any ball caught on the full from a kick anywhere in the field of play may be kicked directly into touch gaining ground and you get the line-out throw in as well. I would like to suggest this for kicks that have bounced (grubbers, etc) as well maybe, you could kick touch and gain ground but not get the throw in. This would stop the mindless kicking out of hand, from scrum halves and fly halves particularly. The laws for kicking from a pass etc. would remain but I would suggest that my proposal would make players think very carefully before kicking and backs would become better passers and retainers of possession and players would cover back more to assist and get counter moves going.
2. I would revert to the way we used to play with centres playing left and right and not inside and outside.
If an outside centre gets involved in a maul or ruck he has to try to get back to his position on the outside and very often you see a Jacques Fourie (outside centre) staying at the maul and leaving his duties to one of the forwards. How often don't we see a beautiful turnover ball won and find the backline consisting mainly of forwards? If the centres played left and right their positional play would improve dramatically.
I think this could apply to open side and blindside flankers as well - the poor blindside flank is very often the slower player and has to make a considerable amount of ground to get to the breakdowns.
Going back to the centres - they very often find themselves playing left and right from broken play anyway.
3. The number of dropped goal attempts are mostly taken where there is space for the whole back line to play.
How about a deduction of one point for every drop-goal attempt that goes astray? I don't think we'll get that one past Naas!
4. A last thought - could we remind forwards that when they appear in broken play or in the backline that they most times would be a lot more valuable if they passed and not just barged forward like Tiaan Liebenberg did on Saturday and Bismarck and Juan Smith do regularly for the Boks.
Hopefully these comments will remind players that this is a running and passing game and that through playing this way we will see the Habanas of this game getting the chances they deserve.