World Rugby’s latest flurry of law change recommendations have been criticized as “madness”. Rob Baxter, the director of rugby at Exeter Chiefs, argues that constant ti\tempering with the game’s laws and interpretations is confusing new spectators and is undermining the sport’s ambitions for global growth.
Just over a fortnight ago, World Rugby announced a raft of proposed measures aimed at broadening the appeal of the sport by, among other things, reducing the number of times a rolling maul can be restarted and looking to encourage fewer scrum resets. Few of the initiatives have impressed Baxter, a strong believer that rugby has an unhealthy obsession with tweaking laws.
“We need to stop changing the laws,” said Baxter, one of the Premiership’s most respected figures. “We’re trying to grow the game and there’s no sport in the world that tries to grow by confusing new supporters every 12 months.
The game was fine three or four years ago, and we didn’t need to change it then – 90% of the law changes are to redo things that have been created by other law changes. It’s madness.”
Along with everyone else, Baxter wants rugby to be both safe to play and enticing to new supporters but, in his view, the simplistic pursuit of a more attractive and entertaining product risks eroding the game’s traditional pillars.
“You grow the game by introducing new players and people to it, but we’re confusing new people every year by changing laws and interpretations,” he said.
Baxter, who guided Exeter to a domestic league and European title double in 2020, also said he would not be keen on the Premiership hosting some of the optional trials being encouraged by World Rugby.
