A game of three halves and infinite law changes

The French have a lovely way of describing the banter and gossip that takes place in anticipation of the next big rugby match: "The third half."

Last Friday, at the annual lunch of the Sydney University Football Club – note the archaic "Football" in the club's title – there was plenty of third-half talk about Saturday's Tri-Nations test, the looming battle of Brisbane between the Wallabies and the All Blacks.

Robbie Deans, one of the speakers at the lunch, was asked if the Wallabies could bounce back from the belting they had received from the Springboks at Johannesburg.

"We have to bounce back," he said in that steely, laconic manner fast becoming his trademark.

Deans made the valid point that the Wallabies were in the happy position of having another chance to redeem their season.

We got an insight into his determination to win when a trivia competition began.

Everyone stood up for the questions and if they got an answer wrong (England defeated Scotland in the first rugby international in 1871?*) then they had to sit down.

After each question, it was as if a scythe had cut down swaths of those standing up. Deans was in the last group to be cut down.

During a discussion he made the interesting point that he had detected more passion for rugby among the faithful in Australia than he had experienced in New Zealand.

There it was taken for granted that rugby was the No 1 sport. Here the rugby community has to battle for its place in the winter sun with the other codes. So the rugby community in Australia might be smaller, but the fans are also more passionate about the game.

Proof of this passion lies in the history of the Sydney University club. It is the eighth-oldest rugby club in the world, and the oldest in the southern hemisphere. It has produced over 100 Australian representatives and won 25 first-grade premierships, with another to come, probably, this year.

In the early 1920s, Herbert "Doc" Evatt tried to turn the club into a rugby league organisation.

The plot was foiled, which saved rugby as a mainstream sport in NSW, in my opinion.

The lunch programme quoted a report from the Sydney Morning Herald on August 22, 1865, of the first rugby match played at Sydney University: "After an exciting struggle, which lasted an hour and a half, during which no goals were obtained by either side, the game was stopped owing to a misunderstanding with regard to the rules."

The more things change, the more things stay the same and, 143 years on, there are still misunderstandings about the laws of rugby (the rules became laws somewhere in the history of the game). There have been at least six major rewritings of the laws. This season, the game is experiencing yet another radical rewriting of the law with the experimental law variations (ELVs).

It's clear to me that the team that has understood the zen of the ELVs in tests has won. After the All Blacks lost to the Springboks and the Wallabies, New Zealand coach Graham Henry complained that the results were unfair as his team had "played all the rugby".

But a great deal of this rugby had been played inside the All Blacks' 22. An inevitable turnover to the opposition and the All Blacks found themselves under intolerable pressure.

One of the consequences of the sanction against taking the ball into the 22 before kicking out is that attacking teams can sustain pressure for much longer periods of time than under the old laws of rugby. Once a team is on the attack, as the Wallabies showed in Sydney and the Springboks demonstrated so lethally in Johannesburg, the ELVs allow teams to play expansively to open up gaps all over the field.

The team that plays its expansive rugby in the parts of the field where chances can be converted into tries will win at Brisbane. The Wallabies played the ELVs perfectly at Perth and Sydney; poorly at Auckland; perfectly at Cape Town; poorly at Johannesburg.

What will be the third-half talk after Brisbane?

* Scotland defeated England 4-1

- © Fairfax NZ News