NRL 2021: Coaches planning how to exploit new rule changes, Paul Kent

Referees have been working with clubs all off-season to get the new rule changes right, while coaches have been working out how to work around them, writes Paul Kent.

Rugby league must be the only game in the world where the moment a rule is introduced to improve the game’s quality the very people it is intended to benefit set about finding ways to exploit it.

Referees have been working with clubs all summer to school them on the new rules introduced last December and how they will work when the season begins next month.

The coaches took the news of the new rules philosophically, which is to say they spent their summer conjuring ways to exploit them to the best of their advantage.

It is the game’s most reliable economy, that of cause and effect.

The effort and ingenuity put into exploiting the rules, and the referees’ consistent interpretation of those rules, is worthy of a certain kind of shadowy admiration.

Among the changes are a six-again call when defenders are off-side, instead of a penalty, as it used to be. This stops teams deliberately standing off-side to concede a penalty to reset their defence.

“It should mean less stoppages, more fatigue, more open play,” NRL head of football Graham Annesley said yesterday, with admirable conviction.

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NRL teams are already working out how to exploit the new rules for 2021. Picture: Getty Images.

Injured players who need play stopped will be forced to be interchanged. This stops players faking an injury to stop play and earn their team a rest when they are under duress in defence.

Play will restart with a play-the-ball instead of a scrum when a player goes into touch, a shift to stop the time wasting from another scrum.

The new rules are designed to speed up play and increase fatigue and reintroduce certain manly qualities some say have been lost from the game.

But already coaches are exploring new ways to disguise wrestling and conjuring ways to use the new rules against themselves.

For example, some clubs are already planning to kick the ball into touch instead of trying to jam it into a corner, which kept the ball in play.

Their fear is by playing transition football, going from attack straight into defence without a restart, which brings a higher chance of fatigue, they might concede a six-again call after tackle two or three, turning it into an eight or nine tackle set.

Which brings more fatigue.

Given the quality of ballcarriers that make up the back three at some clubs, the strong running fullbacks and wingers so difficult to contain, coaches are paranoid about conceding a six again against the strength of their runs.

They figure a play-the-ball restart allows them to reset their defence before the referee restarts play.

Players who go down injured and need time stopped will cost an interchange. Picture: Getty Images.

Another benefit is it allows the attack time to get their forwards back to take the early hit-ups, which is easier to defend against rather than dynamic back threes such as a Ryan Papenhuyzen straight into a Josh Addo-Carr straight into a do-your-best.

So essentially it takes the kick returns of the likes of James Tedesco and Tom Trbojevic out of play, which is not what it was intended for.

“The whole intention of it is to give more compliance for the rules without stopping the game as much,” Annesley said.

“It’s a constant battle between enforcement of the rules and coaches trying to use the rules to their own advantage.”

Astute readers will note, though, that a rule was introduced some years ago for basically the opposite reason.

Billy Slater was so dangerous on the kick return some years back teams deliberately kicked the ball dead, forcing a restart and preventing Slater returning the ball in broken play.

So the seven-tackle 20m restart was introduced to discourage the negative ploy. Now, teams will effectively be putting it over the sideline to achieve the same result.

Some coaches are practising trapping the ball in the scrum, or calling “break”, to catch defending backrowers breaking early from a scrum, which is now a penalty.

The penalty is no longer a differential, meaning scrum penalties could now decide results, something that makes coaches very nervous

On the flip side, coaches are also worried about being unable to break early when scrums are still fed into the second row, giving the attack a tremendous advantage.

Could the NRL’s new rules backfire and take some of the most exciting players out of the game? Picture: Alix Sweeney

The most concerning part of the new rules is they are artificial ways to counteract the influence of the wrestle in the game without actually addressing the wrestle itself.

So naturally coaches have been ramping up their wrestling strategies, mostly working hard to disguise it, in a bid to win the ruck.

Some coaches are moving away from the third defender pinning the knees, for example, to have the third defender instead pick up a single leg and spin the ballrunner around to delay the play-the-ball.

It deceptively looks like there is still movement in the tackle, delaying a call of “held”, even though the ballrunner has no realistic hope of either breaking the tackle or offloading.

Worse, it is disguised as a harmless tackle but is dangerous enough to wishbone a ballrunner.

Until the referees get on top of these strategies the rest is just window dressing.

Originally published as NRL 2021: Coaches planning how to exploit new rule changes, Paul Kent