The new “Six Again” rule is a revelation!
The game was already the fastest flowing code of football as it was (average of 70+% of the game with ball in play); now, the ref doesn’t have to blow the whistle and stop play for a penalty for messing around in the ruck, nor does he have to ignore messing about in the ruck because he doesn’t want to stop the game for a penalty, and he can just give the attacking team a fresh set of six.
Brilliant rule!
Scrums get a bad rep in RL, too many people look at them wrongly. Rather than people expecting them to be about the actual scrum taking place and trying to gain penalty advantages; they should be looked at as being important for the attacking team as it groups together most of the defenders into one part of the field and opens up the rest of the pitch to attack once the ball is out of the scrum quickly.
However, without them, it’s another way in which the ball is in-play more and the games are flowing more.
And I’d love to see what that does to the ball-in-play stats.
The NRL did some analysis on ball-in-play across different codes of football a few years ago:
Rugby league came top at 72%
Association football 65%
Rugby union 33%
Gridiron 11%
If these rules improve on that again, I think they’ll be here to stay... and I think RL should get some better reviews and coverage for it.