The game of rugby now finds itself in a strange position. On the one hand, the laws themselves remain as complicated as they ever were, in some respects more so. But, on the other hand, players, administrators and referees are all in their different ways trying to make the game more flowing, more watchable, more suitable for what they hope will be a mass audience in an era of professionalism dominated by television. Predictably enough, the result has been confusion all round.

Forward passes are now ignored if blowing the whistle would interrupt a movement – particularly a movement which has resulted in a try. There were several examples of this indulgence in the Five Nations season that has just ended.
The scrum has also become a penalty-free zone. Or, to be precise, one aspect of the scrum, the crooked feed, has become a regular feature of the game. When did you last see a strike against the head in an international or, for that matter, in the Courage First or Second Divisions? Things have not yet reached the stage they are at in rugby league, where the front rows lean forward at an angle of approximately 60 degrees to the ground and the scrum-half bounces the ball off the outside leg of the loose-head prop. But this is the way they are going.And yet the laws are clear that a crooked feed is punishable with an indirect free-kick. It has always escaped me quite why a deliberate attempt to gain an unfair advantage should be treated more leniently than, say, failing to release the ball when the tackled player is in no position to do anything of the kind. But even this minor penalty is seldom exacted these days.In other respects, the scrum is the reverse of penalty-free.

Indeed, it has become the most fecund source of a useful three points. Or, if a penalty try is awarded, of seven.Certainly, defending props will often deliberately collapse a scrum on their own line if they think that thereby they can avoid a pushover try. But as Gerald Davies pointed out last Saturday in what we old journalists have been taught to call Another Newspaper, they do not engage in this practice nearly as much as referees clearly imagine they do Sometimes the sinners are in the attacking front row. I have even seen a penalty awarded on the defending side’s 22 and on its own put-in. What on earth would be the point of collapsing a scrum in these circumstances?The award of penalty tries has become even more farcical Ten years ago such scores were rare Thirty years ago they were more or less non-existent.