Quote Originally Posted by Mel_C View Post
So if you're manning the mark you have to basically stand like a statue now otherwise it's 50 metres. What is wrong with this administration?

If they want the game to flow quicker they need to start penalising players that continue holding down their opponent after a free is paid. It happens time and time again and yet nothing happens. But if you step over the mark by 1cm you are penalised 50 metres.
Yes, that's my major rule gripe: that inconsequential running through the protected zone is 50, but it's okay for a player to wrestle with their opponent, delaying them taking their kick for about 10 or 20 seconds.

Rule of the week can also bug me. That is, something that has been largely ignored for a while, is cracked down on during the first game of the round, strictly enforced for the rest of the round and then forgotten about a couple of weeks later. I also find it sort of odd, that there's still tinkering with the rules, 160 years after the game's administrators first started doing so. You'd think that we would have got it largely right by now?

By the way, if anyone wants to read a good book on the history of rule and tactical changes of the game, I recommend Time and Space by James Coventry. Essentially the story of administrators trying to create more time and space, as a whole, while coaches tried to create less time and space for their opponents, but more for their own sides.