Lineout possession needs a legal lift

might encourage players to handle more often.

The legislators could have gone further. They could have legalised

lineout lifting, especially as nowadays colleagues may stand as close

together as they wish provided the two opposing lines are a clear metre

apart.

It has been surprising that lineouts so far are still being widely

spaced, as they had to be until this season. Naturally, a lofty, but not

bulky, specialist like Doddie Weir functions most effectively in space

where he can fairly utilise his height, reach and jump, not to mention

his guile in hoodwinking opponents as to where and how he will leap.

It certainly is easier for opponents to nobble a more gifted

specialist in the closer confines of a squashed line. Which is why one

expected to see sides not too well equipped for contesting lineouts

standing close together so that at least they might be able to give

their jumpers a bit of lift support to which, in my view, referees

should turn a tolerant eye. After all, many of them do so in relation to

squint insertions to scrummages, and to players being taken out when

they do not have the ball.

A problem for referees is how to adjudicate on lifting. English

officials apparently hold the view that if the support player has an

open hand on his jumper's shorts that is legal, but if the fists are

clenched, that is illegal. Others feel that hands on the jersey are

acceptable, hands gripping shorts are not. Nor is the aim of forcing

support players to observe the metre spacing until the ball has been

touched proved successful so far. Old habits die hard.

There even is difference of opinion over what the punishment for

lifting should be. Prior to the recent Test matches in South Africa,

Sandy MacNeill (Australia) and David Bishop (New Zealand), after some

early difference of view, agreed that lifting would be a penalty kick

offence. In the northern hemisphere, referees are awarding a free kick.

The law states that before the ball has been touched, no player may

push, charge, shoulder, or in any way hold another player of either team

(penalty kick), nor use any other player as a support to enable him to

jump for the ball (free kick).

According to southern hemisphere referees, if you lift your jumping

colleague you concede a penalty kick, but if you use a colleague or an

opponent as a lever to aid your jump you concede a free kick. Clearly,

the legislators hope to eliminate levering on an opponent's shoulder by

insisting in law that, in jumping for the ball, a player must use both

hands or his inside arm to catch or deflect. Great lineout practitioners

such as Gordon Brown, Alastair McHarg, and Bill Hunter must be wondering

what the game is coming to.

My own observations suggest that ball of better quality is more

frequently on offer when jumpers are given some assistance in going

upwards. Having seen live all five All Blacks games on their recent tour

to South Africa and, on television, those played also by the Australians

there, I was impressed by the amount of two-handed catching by South

African lineout specialists and the wider range of subsequent options

that were available.

Clearly, South African referees have opted out of the lifting clause

so that lineout men and their supports have made an art form of lifting

and, at times, of actually suspending the jumper until he has done his

bit. Nor did this eliminate that quick ball from the top of the jump. It

simply meant that instead of providing deflected ball which frequently

put scrum halves or sweepers under severe pressure, especially in

northern hemisphere winter conditions, the South Africans caught and, in

virtually the same instant, flicked the ball two-handed to the

recipient. The quality was higher, the speed of delivery off the top

almost as quick.

Naturally, the New Zealanders took a dim view of their opponents

getting away with illegalities -- as if the All Blacks, for years, have

not compressed lineouts illegally to leave their own jumper virtually

unmolested. What niggled them most was that the South African

specialists had so perfected the art of lifting as to bring benefit to

their own teams and, even more important, to providing a quick restart

to playing action.

Of course the provincial games were refereed by South African

officials. But, prior to the Tests, MacNeill and Bishop made it known

that they would be strict in penalising lifting, which proved

frustrating to the Springboks whose deflecting was not on a par with

their supported catching.

One other benefit of legalising lifting would be to take some pressure

off referees. There is a very fine line between legality and illegality.

Also, if support forwards are engaged in giving their jumpers more

height they are not getting up to something much more against the

spirit.

In five Scottish games this season, one of the most impressive bits of

lineout play was when Robbie Brown (Melrose) rose like a pheasant to

take ball as clean as a whistle in both hands for South against

Leinster. One has high regard for the impressive utility value and

resolve of that admirable son of Greenyards. But that, for sure, was

some lift-off!