General reffing woes, law changes etc.

[Cameo]

Two things being talked about in terms of rule changes in the southern hemisphere at the moment:

1. Doing something about the maul - Especially brought to prominence as the opposition are killing the two Pacific Island teams by mauling them to death (often after being put in position by a scrum penalty but that's a whole other issue). I don't want to see the end of the maul, but I do think they could make some tweaks. The main two would be:

a) You should only get one stop before you have to use it. It is hard enough to stop without the attacking team being allowed to take time regrouping and exploring five different angles before they find a weakness and go again.

b) Stopped should be called a lot quicker. Refs seem to discount the initial backwards movement and allow an inordinate amount of time for a maul to get going. If you have not got beyond where you started (not just sideways) within 3-5 seconds I reckon that is stopped.

c) If they make those changes, they can get rid of all the "swimming" etc. and just let it be a pushing contest. It's too ambiguous (and looks weird) at the moment.

2. Automatic sin bins - Scott Johnson (who has his critics but was largely responsible for the current variations which I think work quite well) has proposed a basketball style penalty count. E.g. ten defensive penalties and the offender gets binned and your count goes back to, say, five. You'd still need scope to penalise additionally for particularly cynical penalties but I can see this would make reffing more consistent. A key point he makes is that it would include advantages too. It is a bugbear of mine that these don't seem to be included in the penalty count.

3. Penalty advantage - This is my additional one. Way too much of the professional game is played under advantage. It makes it dull to watch as there is no jeopardy. It also makes many highlights packages painful. I say, have a max of five phases and then the ref gives the 9 the option of playing on or going back for the penalty.