World Rugby - Law Changes wef 01/01/2023

We were told that World Rugby circulated this 'Law Application Guideline - January 2023' to all NLR Clubs in late December 2022.

We can find no record of having received this notice/circulation. Has any Club out there received this?

The upshot of this is, that despite not having a game for a month, our lads now have one 2 hour Thursday night training session to become acquainted with the law changes before Saturday.

All we need now is an over zealous 'man in the middle' with a stopwatch and we could have a complete farce of a match on Saturday.

We are told that the Guideline is themed 'Speeding up the Game' and is applicable across the game at all levels. I wasn't aware that the game needed speeding up at Level 3/4? I can appreciate that it does at higher levels as it is much more of a televised spectator sport. IMHO, here we are again, over complicating the game we play in order to satisfy the upper echelons.

'Jackler' temporarily placing hands on the floor to retain their balance i can see causing all sorts of problems. Open to interpretation by the ref - some will allow longer, others will ping it almost straight away.

Can't see the reason why they've changed this - surely it's clearer that if you put your hands on the floor, even temporarily, then you aren't capable of supporting your own body weight and should therefore leave the ball alone and get out of the ruck. Makes it a black and white decision, not interpretive. In theory, it could also mean that the jackler has to be more upright to avoid overbalancing which in turn means less need for the player clearing out to either crocodile roll or smash the jackler in the middle of the shoulders to try and shift them as they may be more able to get underneath them go low to high in the clear out which is the safer outcome all round.

Deliberate knock-ons - always been open to interpretation and don't really see any change to that.