To say the games are dragging on a bit now is an understatement. Rugby matches are just taking too long. I’ll give you an example from my experiences as a broadcaster. At the Principality Stadium in Cardiff I do quite a lot of running up and down from pitchside to the television gantry position, and last Saturday after the Wales versus Japan match I rushed down as usual to do some analysis at pitchside only to be told that I was not required because the game had overrun and there was no time left.
There are just too many stoppages. Yes, the intentions are good and generally the correct conclusions are being reached, but at what cost? The game as a spectacle is just becoming too frustrating and too stop-start. Do the officials need as many replays as they are having to reach a decision?
I was doing a Gallagher Prem match at Bath recently and there were a couple of decisions involving knock-ons just before tries. So they are hard to see but the referee had to run all the way from one end of the Rec to the other to look at the big screen — and even then he could not see adequately because of the pictures provided.
Football has got it completely wrong with VAR but what it has got is one high-resolution screen on the halfway line and it needs to be viewed only a couple of times by the officials. Rugby can learn from that. There are just too many replays at the moment and too much time being wasted. For example, in last Saturday’s England versus New Zealand match for the try from George Ford that was disallowed I timed it from the moment when Andrea Piardi, the referee, called time off to when play restarted and it was three minutes. That is too long.
Piardi, left, was in danger of straining his neck while waiting for a TMO verdict at Twickenham last Saturday
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The ball-in-play time is now so much lower than it was. Most top international matches now have between 30 and 35 minutes of ball-in-play time, and yet when I was playing ten years ago we were always aiming to reach 40 minutes. The product is being diminished.
There have been some good initiatives to speed up the game, like the shot clock for kicks, setting the scrummages more quickly and discouraging the huddles before a lineout, but it is almost as if we are walking over £5 notes to pick up pennies by shaving ten seconds off here and there, but then taking three minutes over a tackle decision.
The aerial battle is a big talking point and that is creating a lot of contentious decisions, because there has definitely been more kicking since sides have been unable to block and protect the catcher.
I noticed a good suggestion from the former Wales captain Gwyn Jones last week: that maybe players should be able to make a mark anywhere on the field and so, as they would then be able to take a quick tap and not be touched for ten metres, that may dissuade sides from box-kicking so relentlessly. I wouldn’t say anywhere on the field, but how about 40 metres from your own line, rather than just the 22m it is now, with the view to lessening the trend of always box-kicking in the middle third of the field? That may speed up the game. And it would also encourage kicking to space and the 50:22, which has been a great addition by World Rugby.
De Jager, left, was rightly punished with a red card (and a four-game suspension) for his violent act against France
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As for the bunker system and the number of cards now being issued, I do think the game needs to remember that a good number of head contacts are just unavoidable rugby incidents. There was a good example of this involving James Lowe during the Ireland versus Australia game last weekend, and it was no coincidence that the referee was Karl Dickson, a former player. He had a look at the incident a couple of times and, though there was head contact, concluded there was nothing Lowe could have done about it and that there was minimal force involved, so he just waved play on. It was a rare example of some common sense holding sway.
It is impossible to play 80 minutes of rugby without there being head contacts. We need to accept that. Yes, we want the game to be as safe as it can be, but it is never going to be totally safe and I do believe that the game recognises that and wants to look after its players as much as possible. There is a lot of talk around concussion and litigation at the moment, but I would never consider making a claim because I was always looked after very well. There was never any medical negligence towards me and I never saw any towards anyone else.
But, yes, the violent and unacceptable cases like that of South Africa’s Lood de Jager against France should be punished, and it was good to see a permanent red card being handed out there, rather than just a yellow, so that the bunker could then make the decision.
I actually thought the challenge of the replacement lock Harry Hockings on Wales’s Alex Mann that cost Japan the match in Cardiff was in the same bracket as De Jager’s. Hockings was given a yellow card and it was sent to the bunker, but because it came right at the end of the match it was not announced that it had been upgraded to a red card.
Hockings received a 20-minute red card for this hit, but the decision was later overturned
But I was surprised to hear that World Rugby had rescinded that decision, because it appeared a really malicious shot, with Mann going down with two players tackling him and the tackle having been over. Mann was on his knees and vulnerable and could not generate any power himself as Hockings came flying in.
Yes, the initial hit was on the chest and went up, but why was Hockings going in like that? It was ridiculous and dangerous, and it is only because Mann is so tough and got up straight away that it did not look so much worse. Any player thinking clearly would have taken Mann to the ground and tried to compete for the ball rather than trying to level him like that. It was only right that that cost Japan the game.
Hits like that need to be eradicated from the game, but there are so many less dangerous ones that are being highlighted and scrutinised to the nth degree, slowing the game unnecessarily.
I am not trying to sound like some old-school tough rugby player, but head contacts are inevitable and I do have some sympathy with the comments of Eddie Jones, the Japan head coach, in Cardiff on Saturday when he said that we “are absolutely ruining the game”. For instance, I did not think that Josh Adams’s yellow card deserved to be upgraded to a red. Maybe it is because I watch Adams a lot but I know that he counter-rucks often in games and is usually very good at it. He just got that one slightly wrong and it deserved a yellow card and no more. There is a big difference between going in to dominate and going in to hurt, and mistakes happen.
Adams’s dangerous clearout earned him a suspension for the rest of Wales’s autumn series
There are so many grey areas and so we need more judgments from the referees, as Dickson showed, because at the moment the game seems to want everything to be black and white, and that is an impossible ambition and it is just leading to stoppages and cards everywhere.
It is so difficult for the players. I go back to the controversial Jac Morgan clearout on Carlo Tizzano in the British & Irish Lions Test against Australia last summer. What was he supposed to do? We have rightly removed the croc roll from the game, so you cannot go above a player at a ruck and roll him over, meaning you then have to go lower and try to get underneath the player, but then you have to accept that there will be some head contacts. You cannot have it both ways, otherwise there will be no way of clearing a player out at a ruck.
I like the bunker system and how it is designed to protect the players, but let’s get to the decisions more quickly and let’s make sure that TMOs are coming in only when necessary. The yellow-card decision regarding Wales’s Ben Thomas against Argentina was a good example, because that was definitely foul play that had not been picked up on the field, and Thomas had looked at the player holding him and had tried to kick him in the face. But it just took too long to get to that decision.
As I said, the referees should not be using the stadium screens to make their calls. Something needs to change, because the games need to flow an awful lot more than they do at the moment.