WORLD Rugby’s strategy to attract a new, younger, bigger audience to rugby union rests on a totally bankrupt plan currently being implemented through a raft of lousy, ill-conceived laws. If the game wants to grow it must be stopped in its tracks.
World Rugby’s rewriting of the laws over the last two years is based on the false premise of turning rugby union into a rugby league clone, mainly by undermining the set-piece as a contest for the ball. This is being done by turning scrums and lineouts into restarts which work on the same premise as a rugby league play-the-ball....