h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Lots of talk about uncontested scrums and other lunacies on 606 and other sites. And that the field is congested. So new?

The current bout of legal nitpicking will not address the core dilemma of rugby for the last thirty years, that people have got much bigger and faster and will carry on doing so for a few decades yet.
The same number of bigger faster players are competing fro space on the same pitch that their smaller slower (less damaged) ancestors were doing only 30 years ago.
And the one piece of human phsiology which hasn't changed in that period is human reaction time. The time it takes for the outside half to see the incoming speartackle and avoid it, or for the centre to line up his man and perform what used to be known as a 'swerve', or alternatively a 'side-step' in the days of Dawes, Gibson, Speser and Duckham. And was a wondrous Nowadays we are trying to fit a quart into a pint pot.

The one piece of legislation which hasn't been touched in over 100 years is the minimum size of the pitch.
I therefore propose a widening of the international pitch by at least 10 metres for a trial period of five years.

The results would be very enlightening - fun too. And the injury lists currently bedevilling world rugby would also begin to shrivel as their main cause - repeated impact - became a losing strategy compared to spreading the ball to the new generation of Shane Williamses and Gerald Davieses who would reclaim the wing from the rhinos currently churning up the touchlines.

As a result of that incentive, refereeing this dangerously labyrinthine sport would become easier.

Everyone's a winner.

http://www.therugbyblog.co.uk/?p=377#comment-2963

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/A29145549