Toomua Law helping to shape rugby’s future

Rebels playmaker Matt Toomua is doing more than gearing up for rugby’s return. He’s helping to shape the game’s rules.

Wallabies and Rebels star Matt Toomua has tweaked a new kicking rule

First, there was the Giteau Law, named in honour of the overseas-based Matt Giteau that former Wallabies coach Michael Cheika changed the rules to bring back to Australia for the 2015 World Cup. And now there is the Toomua Rule.

When Melbourne Rebels coach Dave Wessels set the ball rolling on law reform by enlisting his fellow Super Rugby coaches to come up with some law variations for the rebooted Super Rugby AU competition, few thought it would lead as far as it did. On Monday evening, World Rugby approved half a dozen law variations specifically put forward by Australia.

Rugby Australia director of rugby Scott Johnson had taken charge of the campaign and brought in a handful of players to cast their eye over the suggestions.

One such player was Matt Toomua, the Melbourne Rebels five-eighth and the Wallabies’ World Cup playmaker. His eyes lit up at one of the proposals: to do away with marks inside the defensive 22.

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The coaches had put forward the suggestion that every kick should be a genuine contest and that the mark should be abolished. But this opened up the possibility of a return to the days of when Queensland five-eighth Paul McLean used to rain garryowens down on the NSW fullback who would catch the ball just as he was being flattened by rival centre Greg Shambrook. It made for a great spectacle — for Queensland fans. And the potential for serious injury was all too real.

Toomua, however, tweaked the idea. Kicks launched from outside the 22 could still be marked but not those put up from within the opposing quarter. He figured, rightly, that such kicks weren’t likely to be bombs but instead deft tactical kicks.

But instead of a fullback being able to instantly negate the danger by catching the ball — even the old requirement about having to stand still no longer applied and a mark could be claimed by a player in the act of diving full length to catch the ball — play would continue as it would in any other part of the field.

Moreover, any kick grounded in-goal by the defending side would lead to a goal line dropout under the law variation, not a standard 22 dropout.

Toomua’s intention was plain to see: he wanted to open the door to more creative kicking inside the attacking quarter.

Rugby Australia’s referees boss Scott Young, who was also part of the panel working on the law variations, insists Toomua deserves the kudos for coming up with the rule. “I would give him the full credit for that,” Young said. “It was his idea.”

Toomua insists his group had deliberately stuck to the “heart and soul” of rugby in suggesting the new laws and, in particular, to making sure Australia wasn’t put at a disadvantage by playing under one set of rules in the Super Rugby competition and then the standard laws once they graduated to the Wallabies.

“One of the guiding principles when we were discussing the rule changes was that they didn’t negatively affect the Test match team,” Toomua said.

Nor were the changes so jarring that rugby purists would be offended by them.

“We aren’t having three-man scrums or quick taps or things like that,” he said. “There are a few things there that, in my mind, will actively broaden players’ skills, innovations that might actually give us a leg up. But we don’t want to get so open-minded that our brains fall out. We’re being very careful of that.”