If you’re feeling lucky, or cocky, you can visit the World Rugby website and take an exam on the laws of the game. Divided into 21 short modules, you cannot proceed beyond the first page until you’ve successfully navigated the four questions in the opening module. This is the honours paper. Ordinary level is not available.
Question one: Which of these lines are part of the in-goal area?
(a) The dead ball line
(b) The touch-in-goal lines
(c) The goal line
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Still feeling lucky?
Try number four, the exit question from the opening module.
The dash lines, which are parallel to the touchlines, are how far from the touchlines?
(a) 5 metres and 10 metres
(b) 10 metres and 15 metres
(c) 5 metres and 15 metres
(d) 10 metres and 20 metres
You don’t need to know, of course. In a sense you don’t need to know anything. Rugby is a bit like classical opera, if that’s your thing: the action on stage is conducted in a foreign language, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be gripped by the plot or entranced by the spectacle.
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Rugby is the most complex field sport in the world, but for us – the enthralled and the sometimes perplexed – ignorance doesn’t carry a stigma, unless you insist on denying it. The gulf between the experts and pints-in-hand bluffers is greater in rugby than in any other sport. The middle ground is occupied by various degrees of working ignorance.
Offside? According to World Rugby, there are 31 elements for the referee to bear in mind, including subsections and consequences. For the rest of us? Shout at the telly if you want, but it’s just as well to wait for the whistle.
Just imagine yourself as a guest on QI, the BBC gameshow, and their general ignorance round has been devoted to the laws of rugby. Imagine how often their famous klaxon would sound? Do you really want to press the buzzer and take the first stab?
None of this is a barrier to loving the games and being sucked in to the excitement. Because the refs are miked up, not just to the Television Match Official, but also to the broadcasters, there is instant transparency about decisions made on the field. In other sports, like soccer and Gaelic games, referees make a hand signal, and maybe give an explanation to the nearest complainants, but those interactions are not for our ears.
Rugby has been conscious for a long time of that need to explain itself. It is more than 20 years since they started selling Ref Link ear pieces outside rugby internationals. A big constituency of the audience rugby has gained in the professional era didn’t grow up immersed in the game, or didn’t play it. And even if you did, you’re not going to grasp every nuance of the game at first sight. Too much is going on. Too many smart minds are at play.
So, who are we to argue? When a scrum goes down, for example, nobody is entirely sure what the referee is going to do. Cheating in the scrum is one of game’s most resilient vices. You hear people in the game talk about producing a good “picture” for the referee, which sometimes sounds like a plausible alibi as opposed to the whole truth. From time to time referees are fooled.
If you wanted to decide for yourself, the laws are there to be learned. There are 16 infringements, or incidents, that result in a scrum; 26 directives about the formation of the scrum, including subsections; 10 directives about putting the ball in; 11 golden rules about conduct while a scrum is taking place; 12 things to bear in mind about offside at a scrum, and 13 things you must know about “dangerous play and restricted practice.” Including subsections.
Knowing all this, the referee must still work out which team is cheating. And there’s you, spitting the Fever Tree back into your Bombay Sapphire because the learned referee had a guess that was at odds with your guess.
You want to become an expert on the breakdown as well? Knock yourself out.
If you watch enough games on telly you will absorb some of rugby’s jargon: technical terms, coaching references, slang. It is hard to think of another sport that has such an active glossary of terms. If you really pay attention you can work some of them into a coherent sentence, like the handy phrases we learned for the French Oral in the Leaving Cert.
The general quality of analysis is terrific now. The TV networks are conscious of stocking their studio panels with people who are not long retired from the game, or who are still involved in a coaching capacity. In an ever changing game you can tell the cutting-edge currency of their knowledge. When they deliver a piece of rehearsed video analysis it always feels like they’re lowering a drawbridge and beckoning you across the moat.
Every sport continues to evolve, but it just seems that rugby has a hyperactive metabolism. Apart from tactical advances, the laws are always under review. The emphasis in World Rugby’s thinking now is on improving safety for players and facilitating attacking play.
When the 50:22 kick was introduced, for example, it was hoped that it would stretch the field and create more space. At the same time, two years ago, the goal line drop out also came on stream, as well as law changes at the breakdown. Scroll back to 2006, and 23 law changes were trialled in various settings; three years later 10 of them were adopted.
That is how rugby rolls. If you only tune in for the Six Nations, and the big games in the Champions Cup – and the Rugby World Cup when it comes around – the chances are something will have changed while you weren’t looking.
But the elemental things that make rugby so attractive, and so compelling and so dramatic, don’t require an explanation: the combat, the evasion, the ball-skills, the power, the athleticism, the courage, the complete dependence on the collective. All of that hits you between the eyes.
Anyway, take that test for a giggle. The first two questions in module two are a cinch. Now, question three ...
