Writing in the Independent, Chris Hewitt makes his case against the Experimental Law Variations:

If you can imagine a game of rugby in which the scrum was the most gripping theatre of action, in which the line-out tested the skills and discipline of every forward on the field, in which the breakdown was so fiercely contested that the age-old mutual loathing between two neighbouring clubs rose slowly to the surface in a smoulder of spit and snarl, in which hulking great lumps like Faan Rautenbach and Mike Ross were every bit as significant as a Shane Geraghty or a David Strettle – if you can imagine all this, you’re imagining the events that unfolded in Reading at the weekend. And certain members of the International Rugby Board want to do away with it? To hell with them.

Very little happened at the Madejski Stadium on Saturday that the theoreticians behind the governing body’s so-called “experimental law variations” would have understood, let alone celebrated. For a start, only one try was scored. To those who see the try as rugby’s version of football’s goal – that is to say, something not handed out free with cornflakes packets – this was perfectly acceptable; to those labouring under the infantile delusion that more tries equal more entertainment, it would have been anathema. Fortunately, precious few of the latter were in Berkshire for this game. Most of them were back home in Australia, watching the latest nonsense served up by the dead-duck Super 14.

It has already been reported in these pages that if the board’s “laws project group” gets its way at a meeting next month, the ELVs will be imposed on all levels of northern hemisphere rugby in August. This will allow the maul to be collapsed, thereby ensuring its terminal decline, and permit the use of hands in the ruck – a ball-killer’s charter if ever there was one. It will also reduce every game to a harum-scarum riot of free-kicks, which in turn will devalue the set piece and leave specialists such as Rautenbach and Ross with nothing much to do. They might as well book a flight to Tokyo and take up sumo.”

Read the remainder of the article here