Passed down from generation to generation, by word of mouth and in written form, the old rugby adage always told us that rugby league’s founders invented the play-the-ball and “held” rules to do away with rugby union’s traditional (and often said “messy”) rucks and mauls.
After delving into the rules and history of 19th century rugby, and the formative years of rugby league, while undertaking research for my books and websites, I began to find snippets of evidence that the play-the-ball story was not as it has always been told.
From its formation in 1871, the laws of the RFU demanded that play not continue once a ball-carrier was “held” by the opposition – the laws stated he had to put the ball on the ground. If he had been brought to earth in the tackle, he had to keep hold of the ball and regain his feet, and then put or drop the ball down among all the gathered forwards, ready to scrummage.
“In the event of any player holding or running with the ball being tackled and the ball being fairly held he must at once cry down and there put it down.” 1871 RFU Laws.
It was considered unseemly and unsafe in Victorian times for gentlemen to be seen scrapping and laying about in a heap of humanity on the ground in a vain attempt to gain the ball.
The contest for the football was only seen to be a fair match, as in boxing, when the men playing the game and contesting for the ball were on their feet.
The aim of the RFU’s laws was player safety, preventing the play from continuing, where the danger existed of a man being kicked (“rucked”) or mauled, by accident or design, to free the ball from his grip or from under his body.
Significantly, this 1870s rugby tenet of momentarily stopping play after every time a player was tackled to ground or “held” (a.k.a. “the stand-up tackle”) to allow everyone the chance to get back to their feet, went on to become fundamental precepts of rugby league and Canadian and American football, while being entirely removed from existence in rugby union.
In an interview with Matthew Mullineux, the captain of the 1899 British RU team in Sydney, he explained to the local press how the tackled rules were being applied by the RFU’s referees at home:
He specially mentioned the case of a player with the ball being tackled and thrown by several opponents.The English rule was that the referee blew his whistle, and the opposing side allowed the player to get up immediately, still holding the ball, and the player, having risen to his feet, placed the ball on the ground in front of him.
If a player used his foot in the slightest degree to gain possession of the ball from an opposing player who had fallen with the ball the English referee gave a free kick to the fallen man’s side for hacking.
(Source: The Brisbane Courier, 16 June 1899).
As described by Mullineux in the quote above, in rugby union after every tackle or “held” call a scrum took place, with every man required to get back on his feet if he wanted to take part. The ball-carrier, in particular, was required to stand up and keep possession of the ball.
Depending on timing and opportunity, the size of the scrum that ensued could be as many as all 16 forwards in the two packs, or as few as two opposing players (i.e. the tackled player and the tackler, which is the fore-runner of the play-the-ball).
In the late 1890s, most referees in Britain simply opted to blow their whistle every time a player was tackled to ground or “held”. In rugby league (Northern Union), which had split from rugby union in 1895, ordering of a scrum became mandatory.
By the first decade of the 1900s, in rugby union in Australia and New Zealand, there was an increasing habit of letting play continue amongst the players after the ball-carrier was brought down i.e. what is today the modern version of “the breakdown” and rucking.
As with the British team in 1899, this different approaches to the rules led to disagreement and controversy in the numerous exchange of international tours that took place in that decade (notably the 1905 All Blacks tour of Britain and France). There was also conflict over interpretations between the RFU and the IRB.
In rugby league it was decided in 1906, in a determined effort to appeal to spectators and their gate-money, to change teams to 13-a-side and do away with the mandatory scrum after each tackle/”held”, replacing it with a more open “play-the-ball rule,” where the ball was always visible to those watching from beyond the touchlines.
However, rather than the play-the-ball rule being the innovation that we have always been told it was, the real story is that it was the old rugby union laws and principles revisited.
The Yorkshire Post, 13 June 1906, reporting on the Northern Union (rugby league) meeting to introduce the play-the-ball, wrote:
Proposals in the name of the Bradford Club, provided in effect for a return to the ‘play the ball’ rule.
A column in The Truth (New Zealand) of 10 November 1906, in explaining the (professional) rugby game under Northern Union (rugby league), wrote:
To make the game brighter from a spectacular view-point, the Northern Union has this season reduced the number if players to thirteen on each side and the most excellent rule, that was obliterated from the earlier laws of the Union has again been introduced, ‘That a player, when collared, must put the ball into play’.
In 1908 the IRB laws of rugby union were changed to stop referees ordering scrums after every tackle. However, unlike the play-the-ball in rugby league and those of earlier rugby, the new laws opted against requiring the tackled player to get back to his feet, and instead decided he merely had to roll away from the ball and leave it on the ground.
This 1908 amendment introduced into rugby union for the first time what is now considered the traditional rucking game, though even until well after WW2, the IRB laws required: “No player lying on the ground after a tackle shall interfere with the ball in any way until it has been played with the foot of a player who is not lying on the ground.” No one could lawfully dive or pick up the loose ball in a ruck.
Interestingly, rugby union’s 1908 replacing of scrums with rucks was not universally supported, with many arguing it was a change to the fundamentals of the game.
For example, here are some thoughts from the rugby union columnist in Sydney’s weekly sports newspaper, The Referee, in 1909:
Mr Melville simply allowed the players to maul one another in struggling for the ball on the ground after a tackle. And after the two sets of forwards had got mixed up in a heap, the whistle went and a scrummage was formed.
With all due deference to the abilities and good intentions of most of our referees, this, I contend is not Rugby Union football at all; it is spurious, and is foisted on the players as the genuine thing.
In an ironic twist, we can now see that rugby league’s 1906 play-the-ball was no innovation at all, but is in fact a return to 19th century rugby, while the IRB’s 1908 amendments gave birth to an alternative form of faster-paced rugby, which allowed rucking over the ball released by the tackled player.
The modern maul though was still decades away, with the “held” requirements applicable to the “stand-up tackle” still present well into the 1950s: “When a player is tackled but not brought to the ground, he must immediately release the ball so that it falls to the ground between himself and his opponents’ goal line” and defining a “tackle” as occurring “when the holder of the ball in the field of play is held by one or more players of the opposing team so that while he is so held the ball comes in contact with the ground, or there is a moment where he cannot pass or play the ball.”
Both rugby codes, and indeed American football (1876 meeting where Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia adopted the RFU rules) and Canadian football (1884), have evolved from their shared origin point – the first laws of the RFU of 1871 – but they have each grown into distinctly different games or sports.
The principles though of 19th century rugby – that a “tackle” is complete once man is “held” on the ground or “held” standing on his feet, that play does not continue beyond the “tackle” and never with “men off their feet”, and that the ball can only be again brought into play after a tackle by a player first having kicked or touched the ball with his foot – are only to be found today in rugby league (play-the-ball), and Canadian and American football (downs and scrimmage).
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In the above (Youtube) film-clip the RL referee orders a scrum be formed after every tackle. In RU at this time some referees were also doing this, while others let play continue per the RFU & IRB Laws, which allowed a quickly formed “scrum” by as few as two players or as many as were “on hand”.. These latter RU rules were practically the same as that adopted by RL in 1906 (replacing the mandatory scrum) and called it “the play-the-ball rule” (see the film below for this rule in action). In 1908 the IRB directed RU referees to stop ordering a set scrum after every tackle, and also removed from the RU laws the need for the tackled player to stand and begin the informal scrum – both of these laws were replaced by a new law which required the tackled player to immediately release the ball while he was on the ground, thus giving rise to the modern RU rucking game.
In the above (National Film & Sound Archive) film-clip from 1922 the RL referee orders a play-the-ball after the ball-carrier is tackled to ground. The rules and manner of the play-the-ball seen here are practically the same as the method described by Mullineux as in use in RU in the 1890s. The modern RL play-the-ball (two markers, tackled player and dummy-half) was an Australian innovation first adopted in 1926, and taken up in England for the 1927/28 season. The marker being allowed to strike for the ball was removed from the rules after the 1996 season. |
© Sean Fagan
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