All Blacks legend Mils Muliaina has sympathised with current international Ruben Love after the playmaker revealed his dismay at the high ball law.
The Hurricanes star plays at either fly-half or full-back, which means that it is quite often his role to defuse the bombs that come his way.
However, that has become much harder for those in the backfield after World Rugby opted to remove the ‘escort’ law, which prevents the receiving team from blocking the chasers.
All Blacks’ struggles under the high ball
It is an area the All Blacks struggled with in 2025 and it does not look like Love enjoyed it much on his first game back for the Hurricanes.
Having missed the start of the Super Rugby Pacific season through injury, the creative back made his return in their 31-23 victory over Western Force at the weekend.
Love spoke to Sky Sport NZ following that encounter where he said: “Some of the World Rugby rules right now, I mean far out. There’s no support in the backfield, so World Rugby, if you’re watching, change that rule asap.”
He received support from New Zealand Test centurion Muliaina, but the 2011 Rugby World Cup did not definitively state whether the law should be amended.
“I think he’s got a valid point to some degree. It’s a pretty lonely place if you don’t quite get it right. The amount of kicking that’s happening at the moment, particularly with contestables, he could have a right there,” Muliaina said on The Breakdown.
The former full-back was joined on the panel by fellow ex-All Black Steven Bates, who offered his verdict in the debate.
It is a law which has divided opinion, but Bates has seen a huge positive in the amendment, with a number of teams using the ‘up and under’ chaos as the basis of their attacking game.
“The only thing I would say about this is what I do like, and I’ve never been back there, so I don’t really care that much, is when they don’t get those contestables right and the team that kicks it wins the ball back, that’s when we see an open style of rugby played,” the former back-rower said.
“As soon as they win one of those back, they move the ball to the edge, and then we start seeing some free-flowing rugby.”
France and England’s kicking success
Bates used Saturday’s Six Nations finale between France and England to highlight how the kicking game can be used successfully and, therefore, create an entertaining spectacle.
“The competition winner was decided in the final game of the competition after the 80 minutes. What a competition,” he said.
“It was a great game of rugby. The one thing that concerned me [from an All Blacks perspective] and that both teams did really well was the amount of tries they scored, or got disallowed, off the back of attacking kicks.
“Their ability to implement their kicking game was outstanding.”