SYDNEY: Penalties and drop goals will be rewarded by two points rather than three as part of a raft of experimental laws to be trialled in Australia’s National Rugby Championship (NRC), the Australian Rugby Union (ARU) said yesterday in a statement.
The NRC, which aims to give Australia a third tier competition to mimic the success of New Zealand’s National Provincial Championship and South Africa’s Currie Cup, launches next week with nine teams involved.
A public consultation exercise elicited proposals for “law variation and interpretation changes”, which were reviewed by a panel including Wallabies coach Ewen McKenzie and one of his predecessors, Bob Dwyer.
The conversion after a try, which currently earns two points, will now be worth three points, while time limits set for scrum formation (30 seconds) and penalty kicks (45 seconds) are among the 12 changes to be tested.
Rugby union in Australia lags behind rugby league in popularity with many critics lambasting the 15-man code for the time consumed by the scrum, which long ago became a formality in league, and what they see as the distortion caused by awarding three points for a penalty and only five for a try.
The most popular change among the public was the change in the points system, the ARU said, while all were aimed at speeding the game up, rewarding attacking play and increasing the amount of time the ball is in play.
The previous attempt at a national third tier competition, the Australian Rugby Championship, failed to engage the public and was ended after one season in 2007 after piling up A$4.7m ($4.36m) in debts.
REUTERS
