Every four or five years or so, it seems, rugby gets its knickers in a twist over the advantage law, how to apply it and when it ends, and as ever, the sport’s tradition of letting refs make it up as they go along does little to help clarify the situation.

These last two or three months has been one of those periods, so we need to revisit the entire subject and apply what grey matter is left after the excitement of the Six Nations.
What exactly is the aim of the advantage law? What is rugby trying to do here?
And do we need to rethink how it’s applied?
Scrum advantage
First, the aim since t...