FURTHER to John Edwards’ letter last week on rugby as a spectacle, I would add that nowadays virtually every lineout is illegal in that there is more than one person standing out of the lineout immediately before the ball is thrown in. Hence we are getting more and more mauling which, whilst it is a legal tactic, does little for the spectacle of running with the ball. This is more prevalent with lineouts near to the try line when before and during any maul both sides will break the law in more than one way, often ignored by the referee.
Perhaps a worse situation is what happens...