What will Rugby be like in another 20 years...

Just been surfing the BBC site to see if the England side has been announced, and came across this "blog", which I wont cut n' paste (to avoid any copyright stuff), but will post the link....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tomfordyce/2012/03/land_of_the_rugby_giants.html


It talks about size of players increasing, both height and weight.

I think it poses some interesting points, especially around the impact and injury. When I played (20 years ago) you weren't allowed any padding as they have now. Some jerseys started to come out with a little more padding in the shoulder areas. If you look at old footage of American (Grid-iron) football, you will see back then their players where smaller and more agile. They got bigger and bigger until their hits where so hard they need to wear body armour and helmets for the game. Take today's rugby player, with the under jersey padding and the skull caps, they actually look very much like the early American Football player.

Does this mean in another 20 years, when rugby players are even bigger, we will see rugby players with "real" helmets and full body armour.

I actually don't think so, simply because it would inhibit the player too much, and start stop that rugby can be, it is more flowing than grid iron.

But I suppose the question still lies.... What do you think Rugby will be like in another 20 years.

It'll be a lot more like league I imagine.

MajorRoadWorks wrote:Just been surfing the BBC site to see if the England side has been announced, and came across this "blog", which I wont cut n' paste (to avoid any copyright stuff), but will post the link....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tomfordyce/2012/03/land_of_the_rugby_giants.html


It talks about size of players increasing, both height and weight.

I think it poses some interesting points, especially around the impact and injury. When I played (20 years ago) you weren't allowed any padding as they have now. Some jerseys started to come out with a little more padding in the shoulder areas. If you look at old footage of American (Grid-iron) football, you will see back then their players where smaller and more agile. They got bigger and bigger until their hits where so hard they need to wear body armour and helmets for the game. Take today's rugby player, with the under jersey padding and the skull caps, they actually look very much like the early American Football player.

Does this mean in another 20 years, when rugby players are even bigger, we will see rugby players with "real" helmets and full body armour.

I actually don't think so, simply because it would inhibit the player too much, and start stop that rugby can be, it is more flowing than grid iron.

But I suppose the question still lies.... What do you think Rugby will be like in another 20 years.

No it won't happen as our tackle is much more defined so as to guarantee the safety of the players.In AF you can hit a player in the air or just drive a shoulder into his knee joint so injuries occur much more often.

I think one thing that will happen rugby is the tackle will be very strictly policed,we're already seeing this with the recent clamping down on tip tackles but I think late hits and not using the arms will become far more harshly punished in the future.

We will be debating whether Parrise would theoretically still walk into the Italian first fifteen even though they have only just failed to win back-to-back 7Nations grand slams after the cancellation of the GS decider at Murrayfield due to the great north earthquake of '31.

In 20 years players will all be 6 foot 6", they will all way 115 kg.

there will be little distinction in the physicality of a prop or a wing.

rugby pitches will most likely be too small, so collission will be more often than not, advertising will have commercilaised the sport so that we see 20 minute quarters, a game will take 3 hours to complete.

The laws arounf the brakedown will at last have been simplified and referees will have a much easier task. Expect around 5 officials in the match.

Giant chrome robots with lazer eyes and plasma cannon. You heard it here first...

you thinking of the movie Transformers 45 mate.

biltongbek wrote:In 20 years players will all be 6 foot 6", they will all way 115 kg.

there will be little distinction in the physicality of a prop or a wing.

rugby pitches will most likely be too small, so collission will be more often than not, advertising will have commercilaised the sport so that we see 20 minute quarters, a game will take 3 hours to complete.

The laws arounf the brakedown will at last have been simplified and referees will have a much easier task. Expect around 5 officials in the match.

Dont the Americans already play that game ...

yeah but they wear pads.

There will be no lineouts....scrums will just be a means of restarting the game...you will be allowed five tackles.....

....oh hang on!!

20 years.

Backs will keep getting bigger and become more and more like forwards in appearance. Because all of them will be roughly the same size, the present benefits that some backs now have will disappear. The backs will negate each other as effective weapons of attack.

Therefore, instead of open attacking rugby, rugby will again grind down to forward based slogs with burly backs joining in the grinding defensive games that will keep most of the activity in the middle of the field. And because weighty and tall backs aren't getting sufficient traction from a backs orientated game, their skills of attack will lessen and teams will become specialised defenders - no forwards or backs but just standard issue rugby players with equal skills across at least 13 positions - save 15 and 10.
Penalties will become more prevalent and specialised 10 kickers will become even more important than they are now. It might even become The skill - the reason people watch.

But pressures from sponsorship, fans and TV companies will demand a solution to the general stalemate and so the rules will be modified a number of times to try to free up the game.

The forward pass rule will be ammended to allow a modicum of forward motion (yet to be decided by how many degrees; but measuring devices fitted to player bodies will take care of the measurements and tell the ref when to penalise).

The referee will adjudicate as he see fit but he will be either advised by a TMO to penalise or overruled by a TMO whenever the TMO sees an infringement that the ref has missed or imposed unfairly.

I think that's as much as I can see into the future for now and it's more than enough to be going on with.

Good god Fly... I hope you are wrong

biltongbek wrote:you thinking of the movie Transformers 45 mate.

No he's thinking of George North

Props will slim down and be making tackles, and doing breakdown work. Yep. They'll all be like Gethin Jenkins. The classic Julian White standing around and having a cigarette until the next scrum will be a thing of the past.

That's already happening flankertye. Just look at the next crop of props coming through. Healy, Franks, Corbisiero, Bevington etc...

Enormous guys, foward passes, muscular defense, thia all sounds a lot like American football hopefully without the armour.Maybe assistant refs on the park.

Due to the increasing levels of obesity and health and safety concerns all players will be issued with armoured 'chariot' type devices. These will include a couple of probes to allow the ball to be held, (possibly some kind of suction device) and also to pass/hand off (maybe some kind of energy projection device?). Due to the total coverage of the player an extra monocular vision device will be added to the front to allow sight. Some form of PA system will have to be included but due to the crowd noise it will be used to broadcast the players voice at a higher pitch and timbre so as to be heard. An element of flight will have to be included in the design to allow for line outs and restarts. I believe they will be called Rugby Armoured Light Entertainment Kasing. All hail the mighty RALEKs!!!!!!!

Carpe Diem wrote:Due to the increasing levels of obesity and health and safety concerns all players will be issued with armoured 'chariot' type devices. These will include a couple of probes to allow the ball to be held, (possibly some kind of suction device) and also to pass/hand off (maybe some kind of energy projection device?). Due to the total coverage of the player an extra monocular vision device will be added to the front to allow sight. Some form of PA system will have to be included but due to the crowd noise it will be used to broadcast the players voice at a higher pitch and timbre so as to be heard. An element of flight will have to be included in the design to allow for line outs and restarts. I believe they will be called Rugby Armoured Light Entertainment Kasing. All hail the mighty RALEKs!!!!!!!

Wow... I can see it now...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjH92jbgs5Q

Just seen this one...

Who's affraid of the Haka now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJlcoTd93j8&feature=related

I think the distinction of player positions will become more blurred.

Players will all be similar in ability and size and the difference between being a prop and a wing will be a lot less distinctive. Basically as said above it's not unusual to see 6'3 - 6'5 " props, or 6'3"+ wingers.

The game is more about breeding big athletes now, though I think in the long term we will see much less skill in rugby and far more brute force.

Bash, bash, bash English 90's style rugby is pretty much all you see these days to be honest.

I think we will also see more efforts to con the referee like in football with diving. I have already seen a South Arfican forward take a dive after being jabbed in the face, to get a Samoan sent off, not to mention the play acting by an Irish forward who had a knee lightly dropped on him.

I think play acting is the next big challenge in rugby, though sadly the IRB don;t otherwise they'd start doing something about these little incidents that are creeping into rugby.

i reckon the goal posts will be narrowed as kicking is becoming a bit predictable ie too easy.

Maybe science will invent a lightweight, flexible spine/neck brace...sadly it's the serious neck injury that haunts rugby and will no doubt continue to take the game into safer territory than it is now...I do think the days of the high impact scrum may be numbered..

3G pitches will usher in the all in one playing suit, with protective padding becoming the norm, but no helmets.

They may have unearthed a decent Scottish ref by then!

biltongbek wrote:In 20 years players will all be 6 foot 6", they will all way 115 kg.

there will be little distinction in the physicality of a prop or a wing.

rugby pitches will most likely be too small, so collission will be more often than not, advertising will have commercilaised the sport so that we see 20 minute quarters, a game will take 3 hours to complete.

The laws arounf the brakedown will at last have been simplified and referees will have a much easier task. Expect around 5 officials in the match.

Actually, I lik ethe idea of 20 minute quarters. Will eventually be driven by the need for more adverts, but will give the players more rest.

Rugby pitches are already borderline too small. By then they will be tiny.

I also like the ideas of more officials, but not until we can afford them.

I guess I am already living in the future.