Fair enough the call for coming through is pretty fair, it is technically offside as well. I think the overall situation with "collapsed" rucks is a bit iffy though.
There seems to be inconsistency with attacking teams and defending teams. How's the defending team for instance supposed to compete if there are no live players from the attacking side contesting the ruck? In the majority of games attacking sides don't seem to get pinged for being off their feet unless it is a blatantly obvious call.
If a team wants to keep contesting at the ruck, the onus is on them to keep players on their feet so that they have someone for their players to bind to. That is one of the ways counter-rucking takes place; a team suddenly and unexpectedly commits additional players to the ruck and overwhelms opponents who thought they had won the ball. To do this, you need to have at least one player on his feet to bind to
Perhaps this be why we're seeing most modern defences just fan out and stay out of rucks. Since there is not much reward in competing anymore and the attacking sides by and large get away with murder.
One of the great problems getting the Laws right with contests for the ball at tackle and ruck is making that contest
fair but not equal.
In order for the game to work, the contest has to be balanced quite heavily favour of the team in possession. Really good skills will allow the team not in possession a chance of turning the ball over. However, it must not be a 50/50 contest. If it is, and teams in possession will have a 50% chance of of losing the ball at any breakdown, they wont take it into contact, they will kick it away, preferring to have that 50/50 contest at the opponent's end of the field. The opponents too will kick it away and then we have the aimless kicking aerial ping pong of the type that plagued the game in the late 2000's. They keep it up until someone makes a mistake (scrum or penalty) or the ball goes into touch (line-out).
My biggest gripe is that collapsed ruck essentially means the contest for the ball is over (definition from ref's mouth), there can't be end of contest though can there?
Well, there can be to a certain extent.
[TEXTAREA]16.7 UNSUCCESSFUL END TO A RUCK
(c)
When the ball has been clearly won by a team at a ruck and the ball is available to be played
the referee will call “Use it!†after which the ball must be played within five seconds. If the
ball is not played within five seconds the referee will award a scrum and the team not in
possession of the ball at the ruck is awarded the throw-in.[/TEXTAREA]
When this happens it is effectively the end of the contest at that ruck, although, when the referee calls "use it", the team not in possession has five seconds to counter-ruck or legally disrupt the ruck as much as possible to make it difficult for the SH to use it. If they do a good enough job and the SH can't clear it, they will get the feed to the scrum. To do this successfully, they would need to commit numbers to the ruck and that would leave them short in defence so its a risky move which is probably why you don't see it very often.
It seems to be a law variation or directive from Sanzar this year:
http://www.iol.co.za/sport/rugby/rugby-laws-tweaked-ahead-of-superrugby-1989504
Basically there is no point in counter attacking anymore and you might as well collapse the ruck if you're the attacking team
[TEXTAREA]"At rucks. SARU indicates that a collapsed ruck would remain a ruck and If a player attempts to step through a collapsed ruck, he is liable to be penalised."[/TEXTAREA]
Not sure why SARU thinks that is new. It has always been the case that a ruck remains a ruck even if no players are on their feet. If it were not the case, players would allowed to swarm all around it as soon as it collapsed, because the offside lines would disappear.
Remember, deliberately collapsing a ruck is still a penalty
[TEXTAREA]16.3 RUCKING
(c) A player must not
intentionally collapse a ruck. This is dangerous play.
Sanction: Penalty kick[/TEXTAREA]
