Yet Another ELV Combo in 3N

Oh boy. It is already a bit tricky (though exciting) that the International Rugby Board has announced a global trial of 13 Experimental Law Variations (ELVs) in rugby union worldwide beginning 1 August. To ensure that no lower-level player or referee can watch a match on television or via the Internet and learn what to do, the comps continue to use different ELV combinations.

SANZAR, the cooperative entity created by the joint efforts of the South Africa Rugby Union, the New Zealand Rugby Union, and the Australia Rugby Union, announced today that the Tri-Nations rugby tournament will be played with a new ELV combination this year. The Tri-Nations, for those unfamiliar, is a three-way annual competition between the thre SANZAR nations' national sides. This year's tournament will run from 5 July to 13 September and will include three matches between each pair of teams.

Anyway, back to the ELVs. The 2008 Tri-Nations will be played using the same ELVs used during the recently concluded Super 14 tournament, plus two more: mauls may be pulled down and sides can put as many players as they like in the lineout. Another way to put it is that the Tri-Nations will use the 13 ELVs to be trialed worldwide, plus a bunch more that aren't. An even simpler way to put it is to say that you still can't watch a match on television or the Internet to get an idea of the worldwide ELVs because the big competitions are either using none of them or a different combination than will be used in the upcoming worldwide trial.

If you're not confused yet, consider these additional spanners in the works: England's Rugby Football Union is reconsidering whether the ELVs pertaining to mauls (making it legal to pull down mauls and making it legal to have one's shoulders below one's hips in a maul) are safe enough to be used. And don't forget that when the global ELVs do go into effect worldwide, at least one elite European Competition will feature a different set of them anyway.

In short, we're about one step from the old days, when it was so much work to get everyone playing by the same set of laws in the first place.

Armchair Playmaker likes the ELVs and the action they bring, but there's one thing we don't like: For now, it looks like the best way for a lower-level player or referee to learn how to play rugby union is not to watch it! Surely more uniformity in implementation could have been maintained. The current hydraic rollout of the ELVs across comps calls to mind the old cliche about animals designed by committee.