Rugby rules now 42% briefer - and considerably clearer

Clarity of rules are one thing, actual rules are another. In the old days of whole forward packs in lineouts, no lifting your pre-determined teammate to catch the ball, and fewer stoppages even than now, the game was enjoyable to watch if there was a good flowing backline which could run with the ball without dropping it. Fijians, Tongans, All-Blacks on a good day, Wallabies in the old days and the French sometimes were like that. Nowadays the game seems to stop play almost as much as American Football.

Rugby has two codes, League and Union. The report refers to Union rules. League never had a serious problem since they did away with the 4-tackle rule in the early 1970s. But it was always considered more working class.

The old rules were the best rules: the headmaster would throw a pig stomach full of cloth into a rioting group of school boys and announce that the boy who could bring the 'bag' back to him would be the only boy who would not be whipped. In the resulting maelstrom there developed the basic Rugby ethos: to murder the man with the ball.

Surprising they could have 212 rule book about that at all.

In the old days of whole forward packs in lineouts, no lifting your pre-determined teammate to catch the ball, and fewer stoppages even than now, the game was enjoyable to watch if there was a good flowing backline which could run with the ball without dropping it.

@inkochi, reckon you should have added "however, this was rarely the case". I started watching rugby in the 80s (as a kid) and still remember that forwards handling skills were atrocious back then. Reckon that today's props, hookers and locks are as good if not better ball in hand than 80% of pre-professional era backs.

As for this new simplified law book, rugby laws have been tweaked pretty much every year in the last decade or so, to no avail. Fair to say am not holding my breath with this one and I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of rugby players are still confused by the rules of their own game next year.

I'd like to see them get rid of goals from penalties. Nothing more boring than a team choosing to kick the ball instead of run with it. It's not football....

Nothing is more depressing than a perfectly good bit of play ruined by an off-side penalty that was entirely unintentional, not important and which gives away 3pts.

Sometimes knock-ons are awarded when it looks far more like a harmless fumble while gathering the ball.

The old rules were the best rules: the headmaster would throw a pig stomach full of cloth into a rioting group of school boys and announce that the boy who could bring the 'bag' back to him would be the only boy who would not be whipped. 

Often there wasn't even a bag.