Rugby League’s New Normal Part II - An Explanation

I was in on a media briefing on the Super League rule changes for 2020 on Friday. I say I was in on it. It was conducted on Microsoft Teams so what I actually did was sit silently and listen in place of my friend, 13 pro-am podcast colleague and proper journalist Dave Parkinson. I didn’t actively participate in the discussion. However I did learn a lot and following my piece earlier this week regarding the rule changes I thought it might be instructive to offer you a little follow-up to explain the rationale behind some of the decisions that have been taken.

Dave Rotherham from the laws committee clarified that it had been decided in January that the laws should be looked at. It was not done only as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, by March it had become clear that they would need to deal with the effects of the outbreak. Their aim was to ensure that the game remains safe, fair and entertaining.

Ben Jones from England Performance Unit explained that in order to ensure that the game could return safely from its current suspension they had to demonstrate that a positive Covid test for one player involved in a game would not necessarily mean that all of the others involved in that game would have to self isolate. Should they have do so it is not hard to imagine a scenario where the whole thing comes crashing down and we slide back into a period of suspension.

We know that the risk of transmission outdoors is lower than it is indoors. If it could be demonstrated that face to face contact within a game could be lowered to acceptable levels then that risk could be managed. Face to face contact carries an increased risk of transmission, but for it to be significant it needs to last for 15 minutes or more. The obvious examples of face to face contact in rugby league are tackling and scrums. They examined both to find out whether measures were required to ensure that cumulatively players would not be engaged in face to face contact for longer than that 15-minute threshold.

Tackling is not the big problem. Contact of up to 3 seconds in duration carries only a medium risk. Tackles do not generally involve contact for more than three seconds and so for these purposes are considered ‘fleeting’. On this basis a player would need to be involved in 300 tackles to take them beyond that cumulative 15-minute threshold. This risk is considered manageable although the fact that there is risk involved at all is one of the reasons given for the “6 again” or set restart rule. By discouraging players from holding on or wrestling at the play-the-ball you can further minimise the amount of face to face contact between players.

We’ll see how the set restart will influence the game later but let’s deal with the bigger problem at hand which is scrums. Scrums have been removed essentially because they create a micro-environment. Twelve players breathe the same air during a scrum, and each has the potential to infect any of the other 11. The two scrum halves and the referee are not included in this equation as they are not considered to be in face to face contact with the others. Still, that’s 132 potential transmissions. That risk is considered too great. Those of you who have been watching the NRL will have noted that scrums remain in that competition. It’s important to remember that Public Health England advice is different to that of its Australian equivalent. The higher R rate and significantly higher Covid-19 death toll in the UK were also factors in reaching a different decision to the one seen in the NRL.

The removal of scrums has taken all of the headlines but other types of so-called ‘huddling’ have also been eliminated from rugby league’s new normal. Players will not be allowed to gather at moments of celebration nor will they be able to group together behind the posts as you would often see when a try is conceded. All of these measures serve to reduce the amount of face to face contact during the game to keep it safe.

If like me you were expecting the absence of scrums to result in a tap-athon then you might be interested in learning more about what the game will look like at situations which would normally require a scrum to pack down. If there is a knock-on or the ball goes over the sideline the game will restart with a handover. If the ball is kicked out ‘on the full’ then the handover will take place at the spot where the ball was kicked, just as the scrum does currently. The new rule does not provide an escape route from a poor territorial kick.

One of the concerns the players had with removing scrums was that they would lose the down time that they afford. To combat this referees boss Steve Ganson explained that the shot clock currently used for scrums and drop-outs will be in operation. The teams will have 30 seconds to get set for the next play after the handover. The game clock will stop if play has not restarted by the end of that 30 seconds and will only restart once the ball is played.

There is no such downtime allowance for set restarts. The players are going to have to be that little bit fitter as the down time that conceding a penalty normally creates will disappear. Ganson explained that previously a team conceding a penalty could expect an average of around 22 seconds down time. Set restarts are for situations where a penalty would previously have been given at the ruck. In simple terms infringements which take place before the tackle is completed will remain a penalty. Offences which occur after the tackle is completed but before the ball is played again successfully will become set restarts, giving the attacking team a fresh set of six tackles in possession. The exceptions to this are persistent offences or those which in the opinion of the referee prevent the team in possession from getting sufficient benefit, or professional fouls. For the latter, the referee may impose a 10-minute sin-bin on the offending player.

The set restart rule was introduced into the NRL this year and we have already seen seven weeks of action since their restart. In the early weeks the players relied on a referee’s signal to notify them of a set restart. The clubs felt that it was proving difficult for all players to see that signal and so the alarm that you might have heard frequently during Sky Sports’ recent coverage was introduced. Learning from that, Ganson explained that the existing shot clock buzzer will sound when a set restart is awarded. This should help make all players, TV viewers and - maybe by October - fans inside the stadium aware of the decision.

The final change was the one with less relevance to Covid-19. There has long been a debate about the ‘third man in’ to a tackle. Tackles made by players joining late are often more about stat padding than anything else and have the potential to cause serious knee and leg injuries. Ganson explained that it will now be illegal to hit a ball-carrier below the knee if he is held upright by two or more defenders and is not making any further progress. This is aimed at making the game safer irrespective of Covid-19 and will be retained once the health crisis ends. The only rule changes that will revert back to how they were pre-Covid once we get the all clear are those concerning scrums and huddling.

There was one more rule change considered by the committee but it was agreed that the 20-40 kick, already in place in the NRL, will be deferred for discussion for 2021 as there are no immediate safety concerns relating to it. We can probably expect it to arrive at the start of next season and the interpretation of the current ball steal rule is also up for discussion by the laws committee at that point. Hopefully by then there will be a current professional player on the committee. There have been lots of social media posts by players worrying about how much say they are getting in how the game is changing. Rotherham explained that the player who was on the committee has dropped off but that they are actively looking for a replacement. Until then Gareth Carvell from the players’ union has been their representative in the process.

With just over two weeks to go until Super League’s return it is going to be fascinating to to see how well the changes work and whether they achieve their stated aims of keeping the game safe, fair and entertaining.