Substitutions: The Rule Change World Rugby Needs Most

Substitutions, or rather, reducing them is the rule change the rugby world needs most. World Rugby, the sport's international governing body, currently permits teams to select eight players on the substitutes' bench. But the expansion of substitutes has had several major negative knock-on effects on rugby—both as a spectacle and for the players themselves.

The most important benefits of limiting the number of new players who can take to the field are seeing more skilful rugby and fewer injuries. As a result, it is time for World Rugby to reduce the number of interchanges to five.

Rugby is currently a 23-person game, but is it right that coaches can change over half the team? Limiting them to five substitutions would mean all the players would need to be fitter and faster and less reliant on muscle power as they are likely to have to play a full 80 minutes. This would in turn lead to a greater focus on skills over brawn, making for a better spectacle.

That said, I don't go as far as Mick Cleary who, writing in the Daily Telegraph, argues: "It is not a 23-man game. Rugby union is a 15-man game, and many of us wish to the high heavens that it would revert to it." Nonetheless, he is right that the current state of affairs is damaging rugby.

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More Interesting Substitutions

Coaches could still pick eight players on the bench, from which to choose five, and this would make substitutions far more interesting. With more variables, it would be more tactically demanding for the coaches and would provide greater debate for fans as to how the substitutes should be deployed.

Coaches may still pick a beefy player for 50 minutes of a game, for example a Will Skelton, but they will know they will have to use one of their precious substitutions on replacing him because the rule change would mean if such players don't slim down, they run the risk of being picked off by nimble opponents in the final quarter of the match, leading to more tries and greater entertainment.

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Player Safety

The other pivotal improvement would be in player safety. Even with increases in awareness and teams reporting concussions, is it any wonder they are on the rise when we look at the size of the modern player? Collisions are brutal, often comparable to car crashes. If we want our kids to safely play the game we love, we need to acknowledge and act upon its risks.

Needless to say, lower-impact collisions as a result of lighter players also means fans would see more of the star players, who would spend less time on the treatment table.

This suggestion also has the benefit of maintaining the mantra that rugby is a game for "all shapes and sizes." As the England's Rugby Basics site notes:

"

Rugby union is a territorial, full-contact, team game, inclusive of all shapes and sizes, where 20-stone bulldozers are valued just as highly as small, pacy whippets. It is hard to imagine another British sport where 245lb prop Jason Leonard could stand in a World Cup-winning team alongside 5ft 8in wing Jason Robinson.

"

Make 80 Minutes Mean 80 Minutes

The alternative solution to stop the exponential rise of giants in rugby, which is undermining the principle of a game for all physiques, is to make the 80-minute match 80 minutes of the ball in play, as in basketball.

This would mean players would have to be a lot fitter, but it would make the game last a lot longer and more unpredictably, which may put off fans and television. Reducing substitutions to five would be more effective.

But What Would Happen When a Team Has Used Up All of Their Substitutions and Suffers an Injury?

Here there are two options for World Rugby. The first is to allow a substitution to take place if an independent medical examination (as now happens with concussions) verfies the injury. The second is to not allow coaches more than five changes full-stop. So if a player has to leave the field through injury, his team would have to play with 14 men.

The latter approach is favourable because, as argued above, it would make more interesting demands on the coaches, who would have to take injuries into consideration.

This would help to avoid a repeat of the "Bloodgate scandal"—when Harlequins feigned an injury to winger Tom Williams in the final minutes of a Heineken Cup quarter-final against Leinster so that substituted goalkicker Nick Evans could return to the fray.

Without question, then, World Rugby, for the widespread benefits it would have on the sport for players and fans alike, should limit substitutions to five per game.