World Rugby chair Brett Robinson has hinted that other law trials will likely be conducted before the 2027 Rugby World Cup.<\/p>\n
With the tournament in Australia fast approaching, any law changes must be nailed down by the start of the Nations Championship next year, which kicks off in July 2026.<\/p>\n
The game\u2019s governing body has made a plethora of changes since the 2023 World Cup<\/a> in France, including shot clocks for set-pieces and place kicks.<\/p>\n The scrum options was also removed from a free-kick, while the 20-minute red card has also been introduced with the tweaks made under the banner of making the game quicker and being fan-focused.<\/p>\n Too much senseless kicking<\/p>\n Robinson, who succeeded Sir Bill Beaumont as World Rugby<\/a> chair, believes that there has been progress, he says that the game still has its challenges, which the governing body is hoping to address over the festive season with the shape of the game conference taking place early in the new year.<\/p>\n \u201cWe play a huge role in working with our members to create a better product, and when we say grit in our gears, look over the last 150 years, it\u2019s been more than grit, it\u2019s been clunky, and there\u2019s been a need for a lot of oil to focus on the right things,\u201d Robinson said on the Rugby Unity podcast<\/a> with Eddie Jones and David Pembroke.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter the 2023 World Cup, we did a lot of work, listening to our fans, and there was some research that was presented throughout the game about the things that were really frustrating our fans.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd those primarily were too much senseless kicking, laws and management of the game that wasn\u2019t promoting teams to attack, and then finally, there was just too much dead time. So since 2023, we have made some progress on some of those things and in some we haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019ve been changes to shot clocks, we\u2019re trying to remove dumb and senseless actions like a not straight throw into a lineout and if no contest.<\/p>\n \u201cThe introduction of the 20-minute red card was really frustrating because it took us a lot longer, because some of our friends in the northern hemisphere needed to better understand it.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s definitely been some wins, but I still feel there are some big challenges fundamentally.\u201d<\/p>\n Cards for weak scrums under review? Six Nations bigwigs to plead with World Rugby after Springboks\u2019 dominance<\/a><\/p>\n North and South disagreements<\/p>\n The World Rugby chair also bemoaned the hemispheric views on the game that are stalling changes and causing frustrations for fans.<\/p>\n The Australian hailed Australia and New Zealand\u2019s willingness to trial and test tweaks in Super Rugby Pacific, with the Northern Hemisphere competitions being more resistant to change.<\/p>\n \u201cWe go to the TMO as an example; earlier this year, we had sort of two different perspectives from the north and the south about the role the TMO could play,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n \u201cThere have been some trials that have been underway, and I actually don\u2019t think that they\u2019re working, so we have acknowledged that and we\u2019re establishing a review over the Christmas period, heading into the shape of the game to review that element of the game. To be fair, Super Rugby are trailing some new protocols around the TMO as well.\u201d<\/p>\n The TMO and Foul Play Review Bunker caused frustrations in November, and the usage of full red cards, while the length of TMO reviews has also annoyed fans and pundits. However, Robinson reveals that World Rugby have tasked an independent panel to review the role of the fourth official, which will be led by outgoing New Zealand Rugby CEO Mark Robinson.<\/p>\n \u201cPrimarily, the principles of having the referee in charge of the game and the referee managing resources and being able to make decisions are the primacy of what we believe that the role should be, and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s necessarily the way things have transpired on occasion through the year,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, it creates this frustration and confusion about the tail and the dog and who\u2019s wagging, which we believe it isn\u2019t working and we need to review it and consider it over the Christmas period because we have this this run into 2027 by about June-July next year, we have to have locked down all the things that we think we need to have done.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve put it to the team for our upcoming shape of the game meeting in February and we\u2019ve appointed Mark Robinson who\u2019s retiring from New Zealand Rugby to chair an independent review panel to challenge us about the way we look at at the TMO and some other elements that we may be able to easily shift ahead of the June-July internationals because if we don\u2019t do it by then, we can\u2019t do it a year any more than a year out [from the Rugby World Cup].<\/p>\n World Rugby have \u2018created their own monster\u2019 as prominent coach hits out at calls to depower scrums<\/a><\/p>\n South\u2019s willingness to trial<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we are moving at a [good] pace, we have a cultural problem in our game that involves us wanting to move all the world together and that\u2019s hard because you have different perspectives on how the game should be played and it\u2019s hemispheric; Eddie will have a strong view on this on on the way the game should be played and there\u2019ll be alternate views and we don\u2019t have a system that really enables that to move quickly. That\u2019s something I\u2019ve also challenged us to reconsider as to how we get the work done.<\/p>\n \u201cUltimately, we need unions and competitions to trial. So what\u2019s been wonderful about the southern hemisphere, particularly Super Rugby, Australia and New Zealand, is they are open to trying new things, and they are playing with a whole lot of things, just frustrating things like turning scrums into free kicks if they\u2019re sort of senseless, silly things like offside or in front of the kicker, and they\u2019ve got some silly things like that that they\u2019re trying to tidy up.<\/p>\n \u201cFor example, the quick tap from a free kick, if you\u2019re not on the mark, it\u2019s okay, you can be within a meter or roughly within a metre of the referee and you can go because that frustrates the hell out of people when referees start drawing people back when we actually want the game to be to be fast and operating more quickly.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a trial that they\u2019re looking at around the 50:22, where it now doesn\u2019t matter if you are kicking the ball from inside your half, if the ball\u2019s passed from one side into the other side. So, again, to open up that vehicle of pushing players back on the wings to create more space for attack.<\/p>\n \u201cSo there are things like that that are being trialled, but again we rely on the unions and the competitions to trial these things, and then we embrace them and drive them into law trial and I probably think that there isn\u2019t enough of that happening around the world, where different competitions are experimenting and innovating because it\u2019s from there that we really get the changes in our game.<\/p>\n \u201cThe southern hemisphere, if you go back to the 50s of our century, were the ones who was always trying to agitate because of the pressure of rugby league and AFL, and the competitive sports market that is Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n Want more from Planet Rugby? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a> for world-class coverage you can trust.<\/p>\n