When London Wasps and Saracens in Rugby Union Aviva pay off Square Premier League on Sunday 50,000 fans good money, a number of large Galoots with cauliflower ears every other spinning to see. But lately, these fans are fewer bangs for your buck.
In one of the oddest developments in the world of sports, Rugby Scrum - get the fearsome tangle in which players battle for the ball - is booted into contact.
Press Association Saracens Steve Borthwick, Center, rises in the middle of a crowd during his team Aviva Premiership match against sale.Reasons, by new laws to the difficulty in managing a violent clash between two groups of hefty men weighing more than 1100 kg divided this sport's most striking set piece in an unfathomable pile-up of penalties, a series of incessant re sets and an important source of frustration.
"Scrums as a spectacle are the minute killing," said Austin Healey, a former England footballer and analyst for ESPN.
"Look at all the games at the moment," said the all blacks co-coach Steve Hansen. "Everyone is the same problem suffer."
This issue affects the rules of engagement at Scrum time.
For more than a century, resembled Rugby Scrum 16 man paid Cavalry in the two sets of forwards into each other, smashed strapped to a page. No more. In the interests of the long-term effects of repeated collisions between larger, faster, powerful players, the International Rugby Board, game Association address engage introduced new rules in 2007 to manage opaque area such as competing packs in the Scrum.
Rather than simple line up the player and let into each hammer, referee will now come to together with a sequence of call control instructs - "crouch, touch, break to engage" determined to slow down, reducing the initial impact and reduce the likelihood of Scrums.
In fact, it has the opposite effect: only nine months before the 2011 World Cup, leading new policies to an endless process where it now takes so long until the ball in the majority of Scrums that rugby's key component receive is in danger of killing the game as a spectacle.
Bring rival players from contact to within touching distance and keep on a long break, the officials are angelastet a wave of reduced Scrums, constant restructuring and an unprecedented number of sanctions. It's a trend that some observers, modern Rugby words how confusing, frustrating, and worst of all, to describe led boring.
"There is a real danger that if we act not the game of rugby goes to die because the public will come to see," said Brendan Venter, the Saracens coach.
Consider some of this season of Lowlights. In England's victory over Australia in November, there was no single conclusive Scrum in the entire game: from the eight Scrums, played in the game ended everyone in a penalty or a free-kick.
Even broadcasters appear irritated by the situation: the latest innovation for viewers is an on-screen clock at Scrum time, charts, how much of each game by the confusing mess is consumed.
During the last month Investec international which was annual end of year tournaments between leading rugby Nations of the world, almost 15% of the total game time consumed by the setting and rearrangement of Scrums during the rest of the players on the field level to helpless and even fervent fans interest lost.
Problem is the fact that remains scrummaging devilishly difficult to officiate. Both players tend to cheat, but in the nodes of the equipment which fight for the ball do not know the referee what happened not know the audience what happened and so Gets the truth trampled on.
In other words, the Scrum is a place where confidentiality and skulduggery, combine even the sharpest officials Befuddle. "There, it all about tricks," said Robbie Deans, the Australia coach.
Of course, there's nothing new about all this. Scrums were difficult to comprehend even in the best of times. But if you constantly to reduce, rotate, or pop up with the referee then reduced to guess which team should be punished, are a major focus of dissatisfaction.
All that helps explain prepares as this sport for its quadrennial New Zealand World Cup next year why, some coaches, fans and players ask a basic question about the Scrum: Rugby can make for its defining characteristic, the main reasons why millions of potential viewers turn to be during the World Cup?
"Nobody wants to see six or seven re sets in a row," said Nick wood, Gloucester and England Saxony prop. "But at the same time, you've got to have a competition, otherwise we will end up another code to play."
Here is the problem for rugby's legislators: fans want to cleaner, faster Scrums, but not at the expense of the rough and tumble element of the set piece. In Rugby League, an offshoot of sport, the different rules uses serve Scrums simply as a means, to restart the game. In Rugby Union, the Scrum is regarded as an integral part of the contest, a game within a game that shows, which is more powerful, gutsy, technically versierter and often - if you want only the most.
Rugby's overlords can bury their heads in the Scrum whatever happens. Statistics from the IRB show that the new rules of engagement a decline produced most Scrum re sets by 40% and 50% reduction in Scrum at the 2010 Tri Nations series, an annual tournament between the sports reduced southern hemisphere powers.
But the scrummaging while most observers received the international Investec mauling out and produced some more alarming figures total: crowds were down for every European nation except England amid fears that the Scrum has become a major turn-off.
Only 53,127 fans saw Wales take one of the lowest masses of the country for a game against a leading nation on Australia, because Millennium Stadium opened the 74, 500 seater was, more than a decade before, while the first international rugby match Ireland of restored Aviva stadium was almost 15,000 short of capacity - despite the fact that it featured the reigning world champion. When the barbarians on South Africa at Twickenham took only 31,318 fans were a decrease of almost 50% at the last meeting between the teams in the same stadium in 2007 present.
"We're going to have our heads together and come up with a solution", said Mr Hansen, the all blacks coach. "We have tried talking to referee we have tried everything, but we are not progressing."
Write toJonathan Clegg at jonathan.clegg@wsj.com
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