World Rugby’s latest flurry of law change recommendations have been criticised as “madness”. Rob Baxter, the director of rugby at Exeter Chiefs, argues that constant tinkering with the game’s laws and interpretations is confusing new spectators and is undermining the sport’s ambitions for global growth.
Just over a fortnight ago, World Rugby announced a raft of proposed measures aimed at broadening the appeal of the sport by, among other things, reducing the number of times a rolling maul can be restarted and looking to encourage fewer scrum resets. Few of the initiatives have impressed Baxter, a strong believer that rugby has an unhealthy obsession with tweaking laws.
