Is it time to clarify Law 12 after Warren Gatland questioned the pass that Joe Tomane converted against Wales?
**EVEN COACHES DON'T UNDERSTAND THE FORWARD PASS RULE**
Rugby union is going forward. Or at least the ball is, but if forward is backward then Law 12 is not infringed and play goes on. Warren Gatland was not amused on Saturday evening when Australia's third, ultimately decisive try was allowed, claiming Israel Folau's pass to Joe Tomane was forward, but the five-week November Test window threw up any number of similar incidents.
Not least the pass from Leigh Halfpenny to Owen Williams that led to Wales's second try against Tonga. When the ball left the full-back's hands he was in the middle a dark green cut of grass and when the centre received the pass, he was a stride into the lighter cut. The ball was caught some four metres in front of the point from where it was thrown, but Halfpenny's hand movement was backward and Newton's law of motion applied.
Halfpenny threw the ball backward but it went forward. "An object in motion stays in motion," wrote Newton, "with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force." Fall out of a moving car and you will hit the ground not at the spot at which you left the vehicle but, depending on its speed, some metres in front. Take a running jump off the back of a moving truck and, again, you fall forward of the point you left it.
Law 12 is simple in its definition: "A throw forward occurs when a player throws or passes the ball forward." 'Forward' means towards the opposition's dead ball line." The one stated exception to the rule is if a ball is not thrown forward but hits a player or the ground and then bounces forward.
The Australian Rugby Union issued a video seven years ago explaining why momentum meant that a pass looking forward was illusory and that spectators who yelled at a referee to blow up after the player passing the ball was tackled immediately after releasing it were wrong: it merely looked forward because by the time the receiver caught it, he was well in front of the prone passer whereas had both continued their runs unchecked, he would have remained behind.
The video also showed how, when a player is running at pace, if he delivered a forward pass it would almost be impossible for the receiver to catch the ball because it would be so far in front of him. The International Rugby Board issued a clarification to its throw forward regulation before the 2011 World Cup, emphasising the points raised in the video, and they have been observed by referees and television match officials since.
It seems to have become more of an issue this season because of the prevalence of television match officials – they are in force at every Premiership match. Even though the clarification to Law 12 was made more than two years ago, it is not only some spectators who are unaware of it.
Many of those question why the law is not being taken literally. "Forward means towards the opposition's dead ball line." If the ball is received by one player three, four or five metres in front of the spot from where it was passed, does it not mean that if it is further towards the opposition dead ball line than when it was released and it is, therefore, a forward pass under the definition of the law?
As ever with rugby union, the application of the law is subjective. After Tomane scored against Wales, the referee Wayne Barnes referred Folau's pass to the TMO but, after seeing it himself on the big screen, awarded the try without waiting for a reply. He was satisfied that Folau's hand movement was backwards: the graceless remark of Gatland, the Wales head coach, afterwards that Barnes would not have reached the same conclusion had it been New Zealand playing Australia showed that coaches still have to come to terms with the momentum shift.
The change in emphasis has not been untimely, assisting the attacking side of the game at a time when defence has been dominant. Will it have a positive effect on injuries at a time when barely a week goes by without a professional player breaking, straining or popping something that will keep him out of action for months rather than weeks? Christian Wade and Sean Lamont were the latest two last weekend.
American football allowed a forward pass in 1906, 30 years after it was outlawed. The change was first and foremost a safety issue: the year before, 25 players had been killed and 168 seriously injured, according to the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, on the field of play. The Chicago Tribune reported that body blows, resulting in internal injuries, were responsible for four of the deaths, concussion accounted for six more and three suffered fatal spinal injuries.
The president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, was so appalled that he threatened to ban college football unless the game was made safer. The upshot was a series of rule changes, the most of which was considered to be the sanctioning of one forward pass which, according to commentators at the time, turned a game that was a battle of strength and a series of mass plays, when a ball-carrier was protected by team-mates, and pile-ups into one in which speed and skill became assets.
Safety is still an issue 107 years on, not least concussion, but fatalities are extremely rare, as they are in rugby union. The injury rate has become alarming: as the England head coach Stuart Lancaster ponders his options in the back division for the Six Nations, there are two months in which the five three-quarters in his squad who will miss most, if not all, of the tournament, could grow in number, anything that speeds up the game and reduces the number of breakdowns is to be welcomed, but will anyone advocate one forward pass per movement?
**NORTHAMPTON SET FOR DISCIPLINARY HEARING**
Northampton will this week face a Premiership Rugby disciplinary panel charged with flouting the regulation governing the release of non-England players for an international outside the official window.
The Saints released George North to Wales for last weekend's game against Australia and also let the Lions wing join the national training camp in the Vale of Glamorgan earlier than they were required to under the International Rugby Board regulation governing player release and in defiance of Premiership Rugby's policy which they, like all the other clubs, voted for.
Northampton had no choice but to release North after agreeing to insert a clause in his contract allowing him to be released for national training sessions and matches that fell outside the designated window. Had they not, said the club, the 21-year-old would have joined a team in France where release clauses are common.
Their defence will be that, while they broke a regulation, they acted in the best interests of Premiership rugby, as the game in England looks to attract players of the highest quality. Why scare them off by denying them an opportunity to play for their country?
"The policy has worked well and it has ensured consistency," said Mark McCafferty, the chief executive of Premiership Rugby. "A panel will be made up of officials from the clubs and I suspect that they will not only look at the case itself but also the wider issues.
"Does the regulation need revisiting, not in terms of abandoning it but modifying it so that it allow clubs leeway in the future when it comes to signing players of George North's quality. One reason it is in place is that there is nothing stopping unions arranging matches when it suits them and we already lose Six Nations players for up to six of our 22 league weekends."
One option would be to give dispensation to a club's marquee player. Under the salary cap regulations, each club is allowed to nominate one player whose wages are not included in the cap, but they never reveal who it is.
"It is a question of finding a balance and it is something we are looking at," said McCafferty. "It is a measure drawn up to protect our businesses, but equally the signing of a player like North is clearly an asset to any business and you do not want to miss out on the likes of him. We do not want to damage our own competition."
**WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?**
Premiership Rugby also has the small matter of Europe to grapple with this month after the decision of the French clubs to abort the Rugby Champions Cup, which the Top 14 sides revealed on Thursday was never anything more than a phantom pregnancy.
They used the threat of a tournament with the English to wrestle concessions out of the Celtic unions and Italy on Europe, considering that two out of three, a meritocratic system for the Heineken Cup and splitting the proceeds equally between three leagues, was not a bad outcome.
The third, governance, will not be easily given up by the unions, but at least the topic has been debated this season after being ignored for a year. The French clubs deny that their behaviour has been treacherous, insisting that they remain as committed as their English colleagues to a remodelled Europe which sees governing bodies and clubs working as equal partners.
The immediate question is what happens next season? The French have called for a transition year in which European Rugby Cup Ltd would continue as the organisers before a new body was set up from 2015-16: where the teams agree with the French Rugby Federation is that reform of the club game should be seen in the wider context of how the game in Europe is run as a whole.
The FFR has come under pressure from Rira, the organisation made up of the developing unions in Europe, to make the Six Nations committee more inclusive rather than concerned with one tournament. The notion of democracy has never been well received in union committee rooms, but the FFR is little more impressed at how the game is being run than Fira, vexed that the Six Nations, the Heineken Cup and the IRB are all run from Dublin, along with the RaboDirect Pro 12.
They have suggested Geneva as the headquarters for a new Uefa-style body, a city in a rugby neutral country, but if it is hard to see some of the home unions agreeing to it, and it is highly unlikely that it would be set up by the start of the 2015-16 season.
What that means for European club rugby is more delay. Would one transition year lead to a second and a third? The Premiership clubs do not want to remain in ERC beyond this season, not least because they have a television deal with BT Sport and Sky have the right to an ERC-run Heineken Cup for another four years.
The Premiership club owners are considering all options, short-term and long-term, from an alliance with South Africa to an Anglo-Welsh league, which would be as politically fraught as the Heineken Cup and expanding the Premiership by two or four clubs. While some are backed by wealthy owners and could take a financial buffeting, others are losing up to £2m-a-season and would struggle if the year meant fewer fixtures and spectators and a consequent reduction in season ticket rates. Unity is only wallet deep.
The French say they do not want to play in Europe without the English, even in a transition year, but they have to be more mindful of the views of their union than the Premiership. How Europe unfolds will hinge in no small measure on the resolve of the Ligue Nationale de Rugby.
**GATLAND IS COACH OF THE YEAR BUT PLAYERS MUST MAKE THE DIFFERENCE**
Warren Gatland was this week named the UK coach of the year and the high performance of the year after masterminding the Lions' success in Australia this summer as they won their first series for 16 years.
Wales have been transformed in six years under him, enjoying their best run of success since the halcyon days of the 1970s.
But then, like now, they could not beat New Zealand or South Africa. They came close, such as the 1970 draw against the Springboks and a last-minute defeat to the All Blacks in 1978 after Andy Haden's choreography, but they kept coming up short, even if in different ways.
Gatland has been asked many times if he would be interested in coaching the Lions in 2017, when they will visit his native New Zealand. He gives the standard reply, yes if …, but will he still be in Europe then?
Gatland has become less jovial the more he has become successful. He made few media appearances last month, even though Wales played four internationals, after various run-ins with media outlets. When he did turn up, he often appeared on edge, interpreting each question as if looking for a hidden explosive device before answering it.
Gatland is contracted to Wales until the end of the 2015 World Cup. The Welsh Rugby Union has talked about him filling a supremo role after that, in charge of Welsh rugby on the field from top to bottom.
But Gatland is at his best and most effective on the training field, not behind a desk or the wheel. His native New Zealand must have a pull for him but, more than that, his demeanour after Wales's latest defeat to Australia last weekend exuded frustration.
Wales have become the dominant force in Europe under him at a time when the four regions have been struggling with the Welsh Rugby Union investing in the national set-up far more than the level below. Yet they still fall short against the might of the southern hemisphere.
Gatland and his players often talk about the last 1%, making the right decisions at crucial moments. For all the transformative effect he has had, Gatland cannot coach that 1%. It comes from within his players and it is the same as it was when he arrived and long before that.
**Still want more?**
• English clubs head back to table for Heineken Cup talks
• Toby Flood ponders French move
• All the latest rugby union news, previews and more on our dedicated site
• And to subscribe to the Breakdown, just visit this page, find 'The Breakdown' and follow the instructions Reported by guardian.co.uk 16 hours ago.
**EVEN COACHES DON'T UNDERSTAND THE FORWARD PASS RULE**
Rugby union is going forward. Or at least the ball is, but if forward is backward then Law 12 is not infringed and play goes on. Warren Gatland was not amused on Saturday evening when Australia's third, ultimately decisive try was allowed, claiming Israel Folau's pass to Joe Tomane was forward, but the five-week November Test window threw up any number of similar incidents.
Not least the pass from Leigh Halfpenny to Owen Williams that led to Wales's second try against Tonga. When the ball left the full-back's hands he was in the middle a dark green cut of grass and when the centre received the pass, he was a stride into the lighter cut. The ball was caught some four metres in front of the point from where it was thrown, but Halfpenny's hand movement was backward and Newton's law of motion applied.
Halfpenny threw the ball backward but it went forward. "An object in motion stays in motion," wrote Newton, "with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force." Fall out of a moving car and you will hit the ground not at the spot at which you left the vehicle but, depending on its speed, some metres in front. Take a running jump off the back of a moving truck and, again, you fall forward of the point you left it.
Law 12 is simple in its definition: "A throw forward occurs when a player throws or passes the ball forward." 'Forward' means towards the opposition's dead ball line." The one stated exception to the rule is if a ball is not thrown forward but hits a player or the ground and then bounces forward.
The Australian Rugby Union issued a video seven years ago explaining why momentum meant that a pass looking forward was illusory and that spectators who yelled at a referee to blow up after the player passing the ball was tackled immediately after releasing it were wrong: it merely looked forward because by the time the receiver caught it, he was well in front of the prone passer whereas had both continued their runs unchecked, he would have remained behind.
The video also showed how, when a player is running at pace, if he delivered a forward pass it would almost be impossible for the receiver to catch the ball because it would be so far in front of him. The International Rugby Board issued a clarification to its throw forward regulation before the 2011 World Cup, emphasising the points raised in the video, and they have been observed by referees and television match officials since.
It seems to have become more of an issue this season because of the prevalence of television match officials – they are in force at every Premiership match. Even though the clarification to Law 12 was made more than two years ago, it is not only some spectators who are unaware of it.
Many of those question why the law is not being taken literally. "Forward means towards the opposition's dead ball line." If the ball is received by one player three, four or five metres in front of the spot from where it was passed, does it not mean that if it is further towards the opposition dead ball line than when it was released and it is, therefore, a forward pass under the definition of the law?
As ever with rugby union, the application of the law is subjective. After Tomane scored against Wales, the referee Wayne Barnes referred Folau's pass to the TMO but, after seeing it himself on the big screen, awarded the try without waiting for a reply. He was satisfied that Folau's hand movement was backwards: the graceless remark of Gatland, the Wales head coach, afterwards that Barnes would not have reached the same conclusion had it been New Zealand playing Australia showed that coaches still have to come to terms with the momentum shift.
The change in emphasis has not been untimely, assisting the attacking side of the game at a time when defence has been dominant. Will it have a positive effect on injuries at a time when barely a week goes by without a professional player breaking, straining or popping something that will keep him out of action for months rather than weeks? Christian Wade and Sean Lamont were the latest two last weekend.
American football allowed a forward pass in 1906, 30 years after it was outlawed. The change was first and foremost a safety issue: the year before, 25 players had been killed and 168 seriously injured, according to the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, on the field of play. The Chicago Tribune reported that body blows, resulting in internal injuries, were responsible for four of the deaths, concussion accounted for six more and three suffered fatal spinal injuries.
The president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, was so appalled that he threatened to ban college football unless the game was made safer. The upshot was a series of rule changes, the most of which was considered to be the sanctioning of one forward pass which, according to commentators at the time, turned a game that was a battle of strength and a series of mass plays, when a ball-carrier was protected by team-mates, and pile-ups into one in which speed and skill became assets.
Safety is still an issue 107 years on, not least concussion, but fatalities are extremely rare, as they are in rugby union. The injury rate has become alarming: as the England head coach Stuart Lancaster ponders his options in the back division for the Six Nations, there are two months in which the five three-quarters in his squad who will miss most, if not all, of the tournament, could grow in number, anything that speeds up the game and reduces the number of breakdowns is to be welcomed, but will anyone advocate one forward pass per movement?
**NORTHAMPTON SET FOR DISCIPLINARY HEARING**
Northampton will this week face a Premiership Rugby disciplinary panel charged with flouting the regulation governing the release of non-England players for an international outside the official window.
The Saints released George North to Wales for last weekend's game against Australia and also let the Lions wing join the national training camp in the Vale of Glamorgan earlier than they were required to under the International Rugby Board regulation governing player release and in defiance of Premiership Rugby's policy which they, like all the other clubs, voted for.
Northampton had no choice but to release North after agreeing to insert a clause in his contract allowing him to be released for national training sessions and matches that fell outside the designated window. Had they not, said the club, the 21-year-old would have joined a team in France where release clauses are common.
Their defence will be that, while they broke a regulation, they acted in the best interests of Premiership rugby, as the game in England looks to attract players of the highest quality. Why scare them off by denying them an opportunity to play for their country?
"The policy has worked well and it has ensured consistency," said Mark McCafferty, the chief executive of Premiership Rugby. "A panel will be made up of officials from the clubs and I suspect that they will not only look at the case itself but also the wider issues.
"Does the regulation need revisiting, not in terms of abandoning it but modifying it so that it allow clubs leeway in the future when it comes to signing players of George North's quality. One reason it is in place is that there is nothing stopping unions arranging matches when it suits them and we already lose Six Nations players for up to six of our 22 league weekends."
One option would be to give dispensation to a club's marquee player. Under the salary cap regulations, each club is allowed to nominate one player whose wages are not included in the cap, but they never reveal who it is.
"It is a question of finding a balance and it is something we are looking at," said McCafferty. "It is a measure drawn up to protect our businesses, but equally the signing of a player like North is clearly an asset to any business and you do not want to miss out on the likes of him. We do not want to damage our own competition."
**WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?**
Premiership Rugby also has the small matter of Europe to grapple with this month after the decision of the French clubs to abort the Rugby Champions Cup, which the Top 14 sides revealed on Thursday was never anything more than a phantom pregnancy.
They used the threat of a tournament with the English to wrestle concessions out of the Celtic unions and Italy on Europe, considering that two out of three, a meritocratic system for the Heineken Cup and splitting the proceeds equally between three leagues, was not a bad outcome.
The third, governance, will not be easily given up by the unions, but at least the topic has been debated this season after being ignored for a year. The French clubs deny that their behaviour has been treacherous, insisting that they remain as committed as their English colleagues to a remodelled Europe which sees governing bodies and clubs working as equal partners.
The immediate question is what happens next season? The French have called for a transition year in which European Rugby Cup Ltd would continue as the organisers before a new body was set up from 2015-16: where the teams agree with the French Rugby Federation is that reform of the club game should be seen in the wider context of how the game in Europe is run as a whole.
The FFR has come under pressure from Rira, the organisation made up of the developing unions in Europe, to make the Six Nations committee more inclusive rather than concerned with one tournament. The notion of democracy has never been well received in union committee rooms, but the FFR is little more impressed at how the game is being run than Fira, vexed that the Six Nations, the Heineken Cup and the IRB are all run from Dublin, along with the RaboDirect Pro 12.
They have suggested Geneva as the headquarters for a new Uefa-style body, a city in a rugby neutral country, but if it is hard to see some of the home unions agreeing to it, and it is highly unlikely that it would be set up by the start of the 2015-16 season.
What that means for European club rugby is more delay. Would one transition year lead to a second and a third? The Premiership clubs do not want to remain in ERC beyond this season, not least because they have a television deal with BT Sport and Sky have the right to an ERC-run Heineken Cup for another four years.
The Premiership club owners are considering all options, short-term and long-term, from an alliance with South Africa to an Anglo-Welsh league, which would be as politically fraught as the Heineken Cup and expanding the Premiership by two or four clubs. While some are backed by wealthy owners and could take a financial buffeting, others are losing up to £2m-a-season and would struggle if the year meant fewer fixtures and spectators and a consequent reduction in season ticket rates. Unity is only wallet deep.
The French say they do not want to play in Europe without the English, even in a transition year, but they have to be more mindful of the views of their union than the Premiership. How Europe unfolds will hinge in no small measure on the resolve of the Ligue Nationale de Rugby.
**GATLAND IS COACH OF THE YEAR BUT PLAYERS MUST MAKE THE DIFFERENCE**
Warren Gatland was this week named the UK coach of the year and the high performance of the year after masterminding the Lions' success in Australia this summer as they won their first series for 16 years.
Wales have been transformed in six years under him, enjoying their best run of success since the halcyon days of the 1970s.
But then, like now, they could not beat New Zealand or South Africa. They came close, such as the 1970 draw against the Springboks and a last-minute defeat to the All Blacks in 1978 after Andy Haden's choreography, but they kept coming up short, even if in different ways.
Gatland has been asked many times if he would be interested in coaching the Lions in 2017, when they will visit his native New Zealand. He gives the standard reply, yes if …, but will he still be in Europe then?
Gatland has become less jovial the more he has become successful. He made few media appearances last month, even though Wales played four internationals, after various run-ins with media outlets. When he did turn up, he often appeared on edge, interpreting each question as if looking for a hidden explosive device before answering it.
Gatland is contracted to Wales until the end of the 2015 World Cup. The Welsh Rugby Union has talked about him filling a supremo role after that, in charge of Welsh rugby on the field from top to bottom.
But Gatland is at his best and most effective on the training field, not behind a desk or the wheel. His native New Zealand must have a pull for him but, more than that, his demeanour after Wales's latest defeat to Australia last weekend exuded frustration.
Wales have become the dominant force in Europe under him at a time when the four regions have been struggling with the Welsh Rugby Union investing in the national set-up far more than the level below. Yet they still fall short against the might of the southern hemisphere.
Gatland and his players often talk about the last 1%, making the right decisions at crucial moments. For all the transformative effect he has had, Gatland cannot coach that 1%. It comes from within his players and it is the same as it was when he arrived and long before that.
**Still want more?**
• English clubs head back to table for Heineken Cup talks
• Toby Flood ponders French move
• All the latest rugby union news, previews and more on our dedicated site
• And to subscribe to the Breakdown, just visit this page, find 'The Breakdown' and follow the instructions Reported by guardian.co.uk 16 hours ago.