Last week’s player welfare symposium in Paris organised by World Rugby looked at ways of creating a greater contest at the ruck. And then it was revealed that the days of the jackal could be numbered if an attempt to stop players arriving at a breakdown from handling the ball is endorsed.

The proposal has been made with safety in mind. The early retirement of Wales captain Sam Warburton highlighted the risk of jackalling – standing over the ball after a tackle to win a turnover, with opposition players charging in to make body challenges and thump the scavenger to the ground.

The law book requires a player joining a ruck to do so from behind the offside line and to bind on to a teammate or an opponent before, or at the same time as, making contact. The safety of jackallers would be enhanced were those stipulations enforced, but with the contest element of the game now minimised in the quest for continuity, attacking teams are given latitude.

The symposium reflected on the way the game has changed since it went open in 1995. The ball-in-play time has virtually doubled, the average number of scrums in a match has decreased by 75%, there are half the number of lineouts with kicking tactically for touch now a rarity. Breakdowns, meanwhile, have increased fivefold.

As a consequence, defensive lines across the field have led to constant collisions. Some teams, notably New Zealand, rarely take play beyond a few phases, kicking the ball in the expectation of quickly receiving it back and then counterattacking. Others, including Ireland, hold on to the ball for long periods, abetted by the way the laws are applied.

Outlawing jackalling would mean a return to rucking as the lawmakers intended, supporting players remaining upright and looking to drive forward, playing the ball only with their feet. The intention of the law experiment is to commit more players to the breakdown, preferably forwards, and create space behind – but would it enhance safety if laws were applied as loosely as they are now? Not just through the risk of the tackler or his victim being stamped on, but players charging in to repel a drive. Would it increase the prospect of turnovers? In this year’s Six Nations, the chances of a team retaining possession at a breakdown were 94%, with set-pieces also returning a figure in the 90s.

The essential difference between the two codes of rugby is that union is a contest for possession, but the game itself has become a contest for money. As a result, its more arcane features have been ditched to make it less complex to casual viewers.

World Rugby is proposing a Nations League, worth an estimated £5bn over 12 years, while the Six Nations, as self-serving an organisation as any in sport and disdainful of outside ambition, has been talking to private equity companies. It is prepared to concede commercial control, and with it free-to-air television coverage, in return for a lump sum that for some will match their annual turnover and the loss to the game of some 27% of profits each year.

The average number of scrums in a match have decreased by 75% since 1995. Photograph: Darren Griffiths/Huw Evans/Rex/Shutterstock

The game is putting its soul up for sale. The increasing dependence on financial backers drives law reform as much as player welfare. Union may never be as readily understood as football, but by diluting the contest for possession and making it increasingly resemble rugby league, it is moving in that direction.

How many put-ins to the scrums in the Six Nations were straight? How many crooked feeds resulted in a free-kick? Any throws went down the middle of a lineout? And how many scrums resulted? Referees look to keep the game flowing: the days of 30-plus penalties in a match are history, and if that is welcome, it is less down to an improvement in discipline but at a conniving of offences, especially by the side in possession, in the quest for entertainment.

Who wants to watch a mangle of scrum collapses or hookers repeatedly wiping a ball with a towel before throwing in? The law experiments announced last week are an attempt to cajole toothpaste back into a tube. Moves to create space on the field have tended to backfire because coaches devise ways of ensuring they have the opposite effect to that intended: it was the rule requiring backs to stand five metres behind a scrum that prompted the collapses and resets that caused consternation earlier in the decade.

Today, referees often wave play on when a scrum goes down in the interest of flow. How long before it goes the way of rugby league which uses the set-piece as an uncontested means of restarting the game? As well as being a contest for possession, union has prided itself on being a sport for all shapes and sizes; while league does not have any flankers, it is props that it lacks.

Every player competing in this year’s World Cup must have a load passport that will record what they have done in training at club and national level. How will it be policed? The same can be asked of the idea of limiting substitutions to five. Greater ball-in-play time often makes a game less entertaining rather than more, repetitive recycling amounting to action for the sake of it. Sometimes it pays to take a step back.

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