Be careful for what you wish for! World Rugby are carrying out their promise to trial chip technology in the match balls at the forthcoming Junior World Cup next month in South Africa with a particular view to adjudicating forward passes.
Dangerous territory because forward passes have become endemic in rugby union with the law makers and interpreters twisting and contorting themselves horribly to find ways of justifying them.
Watch any of those pre-match rat-a-tat-tat passing drills most professional teams indulge in and you will struggle to spot a legal pass. Watch those long miss passes and 70 per cent-plus will be forward because the receiver ridiculously starts level with the passer; watch any final “try scoring pass” when there is a clear and obvious overlap and a try seems inevitable and I will guarantee you at least 50 per cent of those passes are forward. Everybody switches off including the ref.
The pseudo scientists on Twitter quote momentum and relative velocities and post laughable GCSE level diagrams designed to show that forward passes are inevitable. They most certainly are not, as I have explained in these columns many times and am happy to do so again for those who weren't paying attention but they plough ahead anyway only to be hoisted by their own petards when they try to justify “flat passes” which by their definition will automatically be forward.
There is one hope, namely that the technology will also demonstrate the many passes in a game that are 100 per cent legal and identify those highly skilled players who can execute them. And that will pose the question: If you can pass legally for chunks of the game why can't you pass legally for the remainder of that match?
This is not a frivolous matter. The thing that defines rugby and separates it from American football, Aussie rules, Gaelic football, handball and basketball is the requirement to pass backwards, it's fundamental. Without proper legal passing we have no sport. A prediction. It's going to get chaotic and rancorous but eventually, in say 10 years rugby will revert to the definition of a forward pass that served for well over 100 years, namely that the ball should not move towards the opposition try line when passed. It's not rocket science, let alone relative velocity science. It's common sense.
