To change or not to change?

The changing nature of sport, or the evolution of the rules of sport. Yesterday I attended the Anglo-Welsh semi-finals of the EDF cup. It is a tournament which is a cup competition between the top tier of English and Welsh clubs. The competition is innovative, exciting and fosters excellent cross boarder rivalry. Whether the tournament will continue is another issue as the premiership rugby clubs do not like it. But it is well received by the fans and game administrators alike. The subject of this blog is not the tournament. It is the laws of the game and the laws of any games and how often to change the game?

The reason I started thinking about this blog, is during the games I watched yesterday and during the six nations championship the kick became king. There was lots of games when minutes went by went the ball was in the air being kicked from wing to wing. The reason for this was the experimental law variations. Rather than going into the specifics of the law that causes this it is enough to know that the idea of the experimental law variations was to keep the ball in play more often. There is no doubt this happens, but rugby union is a game of many facets not just running with the ball in fact the ability to drive the ball up the field in the forwards is a technically difficult skill. In my opinion the ELV laws have fundamentally changed the nature of a great game. They were brought about by pressure from Australia really because they wanted to de power the technical aspects of the game, the scrum and the rolling maul. Essentially to make the game more like rugby league which coincidentally the Australians excel at. Hopefully sense will prevail and the ELVs will go the way of the dinosaurs.

Some sports like Rugby union have a habit of changing the laws of the game on a yearly basis. Football has not changed the laws of the game in years. The argument in football is that the game has to be the same from the park too the stadium. This is fine in principal, in practice it is a joke. Football has to change its rules. Firstly the discipline aspect of football is poor ant referees can not enforce it and the players are not interested in it. If the discipline was tightened up by the introduction of the sin bin at the highest level it would filter down to the lowest level. Maybe just maybe the kids who follow the game might not want to imitate the temper tantrums of Rooney and Ronaldo just the skills they show.

So we the key to changing the laws of the game. Don't change the laws so they fundamentally change the game. Listen to the people in the game from the grass roots upwards not just the broadcasters and the any game will be in safe hands.