SANZAR PARTNERS AGREE ON LAWS STANCE

SANZAR has underlined its commitment to the Experimental Law Variations (ELVs) process by agreeing on special Tri-Nations ELVs to showcase the best of rugby’s new laws.

The competition will be played under the laws that applied in the Super 14 competition, with the addition of two of the ELVs that will be going into global use when the new laws are trialled worldwide from August 1. These two new laws for the Tri-Nations will permit the pulling down of the maul and remove the requirement that teams match numbers at the line out.

“We believe the laws we will play in the nine matches of the Tri-Nations will provide a rigorous examination of the most fundamental of the ELVs, said Jonathan Stones, CEO of SANZAR.

”We discussed a range of laws options from playing under the old laws, (as they will apply in our June tour programmes) to the “new” ELVs that will apply worldwide from August 1.

“We could not immediately agree on which set to apply as all of them had their merits within the complex laws’ schedule that has been a product of the ELV process in the southern hemisphere. However the solution we agreed on allows our players to approach the competition with the confidence of having played a full Super 14 season under these laws while adding in two that are straightforward, clear-cut and leave no room for the nuances of interpretation.”

New Zealand hosts South Africa in Wellington on July 5 in the opening Tri-Nations fixture of the season.

How long must this insanity continue? Surely at some point in the last 12 months since they've been in play the IRB could have made a decision and had uniform laws across the board?

Now we have this farcical situation where we're playing different laws in Super 14, June Internationals, August Internationals, then future Internationals.

I'm over arguing the merits of specific laws, just choose a bunch and make it uniform across the board.

Well said Mo. We should all just play the full blown ELV and have done with it.

it's complete insanity. I don't however blame SANZAR for this one - the real odd one out is the June Internationals. You'd have to had the northern hemisphere teams an advantage here as we'll be instinctively playing into their hands.

you've gotta feel for the players and especially the referees who have to adjust from 7 to 0 to 9 ELV's within two months. Why?

The referee appointments for the June internationals will be interesting. Have they come out yet?

just to clarify the Assistant Referees should be referred to as Touch Judges for the period between 1st May and 17th July, at which point they'll revert to Assistant referees within SANZAR while retaining the Touch Judge title elsewhere. 1st August they'll be Assistant Referees across the board.