Cheika adds support to IRB rule change

RUGBY:REMEMBER THE first summer Test when South African coach Peter de Villiers took off a raft of players, including captain John Smit, on 65 minutes and the touring Lions came storming back into the game.

Smit was then seen warming up on the side of the pitch before he came back on for the “injured” Deon Carstens and, hey presto, the Springbok scrum steadied and the team regained some direction, enough at least to win the Test.

As Dean Richards looks at his three-year ban for making a science out of what has become an unspoken fact of rugby life, the IRB yesterday moved to change the farcical situations that have blossomed over the last season, where players feigned injury and uncontested scrums proliferated.

The IRB response has been to recommend bumping up squads to 23 players from 22 and within that squad there must be a minimum of three specialist frontrow players comprising two props and a hooker in the replacements.

Importantly, once all frontrow replacements have been utilised, and there is a further frontrow injury, and no fit frontrow player is available from the original starting team or replacement bench, the injured player will leave the field but may not be replaced.

This is a change to the existing laws and ensures that a team going to uncontested scrums does not gain an advantage. The change will not apply to international matches.

Leinster coach Michael Cheika was yesterday positive about the change, which can now be adopted by the Magners League, Heineken Cup and Premiership competitions.

“We were asked our opinion of it in writing from the Irish Rugby Union and we wrote back to say we were in favour,” said Cheika.

“We are pro this change because it eliminates the idea of players going off and coming back on and we just think that’s the right way to go.”

But will it stop the phantom injuries that have often led to uncontested scrums?

“I don’t think they are even phantoms,” said Cheika. “I think guys just get crocked and then they come back on.

“The frontrow is a very delicate area as far as injury is concerned. It is more sensitive than any other position on the field. The statistics show that in terms of serious injury that is the most dangerous position. Sometimes you have to compromise the game to show a duty of care. The rule is quite good because it provides that. If props get injured you can replace them.

“But it stops playing the system. Obviously it’s an issue otherwise it wouldn’t have been brought up. The IRB don’t change rules every day. They obviously saw it as an issue.”

That the decision to publicise the new law on the day after Richards and Harlequins’s bag of tricks (which did not involve frontrow players) were embarrassingly exposed by the ERC was simply a coincidence in Cheika’s view. Some opinion is sympathetic to Richards and sees him as rugby’s fall guy. It was reported in Britain that former England coach Dick Best tried to blow the whistle on players feigning blood injury back in 2001.

“It (law change) is coincidental because it’s been in the pipe line for ages,” added Cheika. “We were asked to voice our opinion on this well before this whole thing happened. What I understand is that next year it’s coming in regardless. This season it’s up to the tournament.

And Richards. Fall guy or foolish? “It’s not for me to say,” said the coach. “I’m not here to make political comment about what happens to other people. I’m here for my team and what we do. That’s about it. I don’t know the ins and out of any of that stuff. I’ve read what happened just as you have. You probably know more about it than me.”

The change means that two frontrow players and a replacement frontrow must be injured before a team drops to 14 players and that, says Cheika, is very rare indeed.

“I don’t think that’s ever happened in a game I’ve been involved in, where two frontrows come off and then another frontrow has gone on and got injured and come off,” he said.