Eddie Jones's ELV rant
Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:31
Pointless exercise: Eddie Jones bemoans the new rules
World Cup-winning Springbok assistant coach Eddie Jones has tackled another group of romantics, launching a withering attack on the Experimental Law Variations - saying he fears they are leading rugby down the path of Twenty20 cricket.
Earlier this week Jones blasted Springbok coach Peter de Villiers's new 'expansive' game plan - describing the much-maligned new gameplan as "nonsense".
Jones, who was a technical advisor on Jake White's coaching squad at last year's World Cup, is now the Director of Rugby at Saracens.
The Saracens boss, who also took Australia to the 2003 World Cup Final as the Wallaby head coach, said he is alarmed by what he views as a misguided attempt to make the sport more exciting.
Jones was speaking at the launch of the new Guinness Premiership season, where the introduction of the controversial ELVs topped the agenda.
New rules such as legally being able to collapse the maul and no player restrictions at the line-outs have been greeted with animosity in the Northern Hemisphere.
Jones suggested that the ELVs could create a new version of the sport.
"The important thing is to improve rugby," Jones told a large media gathering.
"To judge the ELVs you have to ask: 'Have they made the game better?'
"Better does not necessarily mean more entertaining. If you want entertainment you watch Twenty20 cricket. We don't want rugby to be Twenty20 cricket. That has to be the judgement line. These changes have been made with a view to entertainment, not to improving rugby.
"The pressure on rugby in Australia is to win fans. They're competing directly against Aussie rules, rugby league and football.
"All three are simple motion games where the ball is always in play. To compete the Super 14 has become a quick-tap motion game.
"The ball is in play a lot but that doesn't create a better game, it creates entertainment – to the detriment of rugby. Now there's Test match cricket and Twenty20 cricket but we need to keep Test match rugby.
"If you play the game well then it becomes a spectacle.
"If you try to make it a spectacle first and foremost, then you get a simplistic version."
