Henry
^ agreed. Certainly about the "You have to accept that penalties can reflect a balance of power", but I still think the scoring system could be reviewed.
Nobody's underestimating that a team committing a number of penalties is often because it's under pressure and being subjected at the breakdown to the opponent's superiority. What you're missing is that there still are many, many ways to commit silly penalties at Rugby, even at pro int'l level, and those sometimes are the reason a team loses. Sure discipline is important, but for it to make you lose a match you've scored 3 tries to none in ? Those are the limits of the system.
Two silly mistakes and the opponent is right there on top 6-5.
It's just the very principle that a team doesn't need to actually score over his opponent, i.e. the very principle of team sports, to win a match. In fact, a team can win heftily by collecting 3 pointers. But we had this talk before...
CAN SCOTLAND SCORE THAT TRY ?!!