Is it time to ditch "play the ball"

[georgeorwell]

Players and fans across the game are complaining about abuse in this area of play. Laying on, flopping, interference and illegal ball ripping to name a few. All this is leading to a slowing down in play, which is nearly always to the advantage of the defending team, and takes a lot of excitement out of the game. Referee's seem reluctant to impose their authority by awarding penalties quickly enough, and/or giving yellow cards to offenders.
Has it got to the point where ref's don't feel there is anything they can do about it, so they have just given up? Should "play the ball" be abandoned. If so how would the ball be got back into play, without going back to the Union way.

A similar thing happened with the scrum, and the authorities, wrongly in my view, altered the rules. We now have a joke scrum, and as a consequence of that change there is no real need for props and a hooker. This has removed a fascinating challenge from the game and imo is to the detriment of the game.

Thoughts please!!

[josie andrews]

Players and fans across the game are complaining about abuse in this area of play. Laying on, flopping, interference and illegal ball ripping to name a few. All this is leading to a slowing down in play, which is nearly always to the advantage of the defending team, and takes a lot of excitement out of the game. Referee's seem reluctant to impose their authority by awarding penalties quickly enough, and/or giving yellow cards to offenders.
Has it got to the point where ref's don't feel there is anything they can do about it, so they have just given up? Should "play the ball" be abandoned. If so how would the ball be got back into play, without going back to the Union way.

A similar thing happened with the scrum, and the authorities, wrongly in my view, altered the rules. We now have a joke scrum, and as a consequence of that change there is no real need for props and a hooker. This has removed a fascinating challenge from the game and imo is to the detriment of the game.

Thoughts please!!

I argued with Graeme West over 20 years ago about the scrum and not needing a specialised hooker, as the ball is just thrown to to loose forward, and he said it was to speed the game up.

I also said several times that there isn't really any need for specialist wingers, because rarely do you see the ball going along the line towards the winger any more, straight up the middle more often than not.

[over the hill]

australia have sorted out the ptb by bringing in another ref. from the few games i`ve seen this year it seems to work well. perhaps we need the same thing here?