It's about evening up the gain line challenge.ellis9 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 11, 2019 9:09 pmSo you're saying that if the backlines were even further apart from each other as they are now, you'd see Tigers use Manu as a creative player more so than using him to run into the opposition?jgriffin wrote: ↑Fri Jan 11, 2019 2:50 pmTackle line already trialling, neon to make it obvious, and if you read the argument against bulking up it is the proximity of lines that is thought to be an issue. Distance gives attacks time to develop and actually depowers a rush defence, funny how that seemed to work OK back in the old days before RL defence emerged.......if you want me to go through the argument I will
Sorry, I don't buy that. He'd have even more yardage to build up pace to smash his way through the defence, which would be great to see but not what your idea is planned to do.
The general idea is to give attacking players a bit more time and space in front of those defensive lines.
Where the defensive offside line is currently set is right on the attacking gain line and encourages a defensive rush tactic.
A slightly deeper set defensive offside line would give attacking teams more time and space to create more doubt and whether to choose to rush as a defensive line or drift would become more mixed automatically creating more mistakes and resulting spaces to attack.
You only need look at how prominent the chop tackle has become in the current game to see how much of an advantage defence currently possesses.
Currently as the ball is played from the ruck the rush is the dominant tactic.
You are still going to get contact and rugby is a contact game so it'll never be entirely without risk and regarding attackers charging it up into the defence I don't think that players could really come together any harder than they currently do anyway and at least it would even up any advantage, that itself would automatically make the side tackle the more suitable type of tackle.
What we need is defensive doubt rather than the current hard and fast tactic.