Why...

[BoyBrumby]

On a vaguely related note, are union rules and interpretations the same the world over? Found it hilarious during the 2000 League "World Cup" (ha!) when an Australian referee tried to refer something to the video referee to only be told by his English touch judge "you can't do that up here, mate." There are toddlers who could organise a sport better than the guys in charge of League.

The rules are the same, but interpretations differ vastly usually depending on the ref. To use an example that caused a fair bit of bad blood between the hemispheres, take the O'Driscoll spear tackle in the first Lions test in 2005. Clearly a bloke being dumped head first on the ground is a no-no in any given situation, but I've seen the fact that Umaga & Mealamu tackled BOD defended by kiwis on the grounds that they were "clearing out the ruck". Not to say that this doesn't go on, but the laws (Law 16) quite clearly state that a player entering a ruck must have at least one arm bound around a team-mate. Regardless of the method of tackle, tackling anyone in a ruck is illegal so a penalty should have been awarded to the Lions.

 

[Smudge]

Sorry, Brumbers, but you're not dragging me in with that.

 

[Burgey]

From an Australian perspective, point A from Maggie's post #35 is spot on.

While ever the ARU draws the majority of its players from elite private schools where most of the boys are born with silver spoons in their mouths, we will never produce a team consistently hard enough to compete with those from SA & NZ in the tri-nations. You'll have your golden eras of course, like the short patch in the 80s when we won the Bledisloe & did the Grand Slam, or the era when we had Eales, Lynagh, Farr-Jones etc through to the 1999 WC, but the structure won't be there to dominate on a consistent level, imo.