Two years before Wallabies lock Darcy Swain damaged All Black midfielder Quinn Tupaea’s knee so badly he might miss a Rugby World Cup, Wallabies and Rebels lock Matt Philip hit Highlanders No.7 James Lentjes so hard that his foot sat at a 90-degree angle to his leg.
The common denominator? The modern ruck and the modern jackal. Philip’s cleanout wasn’t even deemed worthy of a penalty. The game has spent the past two decades becoming more brutal and more unsafe. It is high time someone pressed the pause button.
On this topic, I urge every fan to drop their affiliations to country and club. In fact, I urge them to take their rugby hats off completely and take a look at what the ruck has turned into.
I can guarantee you there are former Test players who would prefer their children not to play rugby as it is currently played at the top level. They have not gone soft: it’s the game that has changed.
Bright minds are currently working on this entire area. They have noted an explosion in the number of rucks since the mid-1990s. The increase, by up to 300 per cent a game, means that current commentators who played in the 1990s are talking about a sport that has only a passing resemblance to the one they played.
Darcy Swain apologised to Quinn Tupaea on field after a clean out that saw him suspended for six weeks.Credit:Getty Images
But there’s more. Over the same period, the number of players involved in the rucks has actually decreased. As coaches noted the game moving to a repeat ruck format, they twigged on to the fact that it might be a good idea to spread their players across the field. Hence, the modern phenomenon of rugby being a game between two sets of players repeatedly running into one another.
Remember those fierce but beautiful Tests played between Australia and New Zealand at the turn of the millennium? They were played in that fashion because the forwards – on their feet – operated as a pack to secure possession by blowing over the ruck, decluttering the field and allowing a proper back line to form behind them.
The last part of this unholy trinity is the size of the players. At the start of professionalism, you could get away with being under 100kg as a forward and still play at the highest level. Today? Forget it even if you are 105kg. At that weight, how would you “survive the cleanout” – as the macabre terminology goes – from a 135kg prop? Try rugby league instead – the “game for all sizes” is no longer the place for you.
How do we get out of the current mess? Making the players smaller has been suggested, by way of reducing the number of tactical substitutions. Work is under way in this area, although the fear of unintended consequences haunts rugby’s decision makers.
Forwards pile in to the breakdown in a Bledisloe clash in 2000.Credit:Fairfax Media
For example, it is said that in the 1960s rugby authorities had had enough of flankers detaching early from scrums to get an early start on the attacking No.10. However, when they were forced to remain as part of the scrum, they started to push: what followed were the power scrummaging years and rugby’s fight with spinal injuries. It is therefore no wonder that some might ask if fatigued players might be a danger to themselves and others.
But that in itself is not enough to defend the status quo. It cannot be emphasised enough that the scourge of the modern ruck is a relatively new thing, not a cherished tradition that should be protected at all costs.
As a result, the “jackal” itself shouldn’t be seen as sacrosanct. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the jackal these days is frequently illegal, rarely results in turnovers, is demonstrably less safe than scrummaging, puts the flow of the game entirely in the ref’s hands, and does nothing more than to set up the poor “jackaler” as a target for the massive transfer of energy from the arriving cleaners, who power, acceleration and mass has increased exponentially.
“He was a sitting duck,” Beauden Barrett said of Tupaea when Swain brought his weight down on his knee.
All players are, and it is not sustainable.
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