Quality over quantity: Rassie Erasmus calls for an end to ball-in-play ‘disservice’

The Springboks coaching staff believes World Rugby should stop its obsession with “ball in play” and focus more on speeding up the time the ball is out of play.

For some time, World Rugby has been banging the drum that fewer stoppages in games and more ball in play make the game more attractive. Their directive to the referees is to influence the game so that there is more ball in play, but Rassie Erasmus and his lieutenants are not convinced this is the way to go.

Former All Blacks head coach Ian Foster has highlighted the arm-wrestle that was the 2023 World Cup pool match between the Springboks and Ireland. “If you look at the South Africa-Ireland game, the ball was in play for 27 minutes throughout the whole game,” Foster said. “It was a very stop-start game. You saw a different spectacle when we played Italy. The world has got to decide which game it would rather watch.”

On the latest Rassie+ podcast, the Boks staff picked apart Foster’s contention that their game against Ireland was unappealing.

Felix Jones said, “What makes a good game for me is when I come out of a stadium, or I watch a game on TV, and I think ‘Wow, what a contest’, that’s what makes the game. Where I think of a moment, it could be at a breakdown, a charge-down, a kick — I think of contest as being the thing of ‘Wow, that was a great game.’

“The best example I can think of is the World Cup, when France played against us in the quarter-final. It was an amazing contest, and I don’t know what the ball-in-play was for that. Then, you had Ireland play New Zealand — that was also an amazing contest, I don’t know what the ball-in-play for that was either. But I do know they were completely different types of games, but they were class, they were exciting, they had different elements.”

Jaco Peyper, the Boks’ refereeing advisor, confirmed that officials are instructed to increase ball-in-play time. He showed a clip of the 2022 Premiership final in which the ball is in play for over two and a half minutes, but there was, in fact, little action because Leicester and Saracens kicked to each other endlessly.

“We used to have a massive drive about ball-in-play,” said former referee Peyper. “You look at this, and the ball is in play throughout the clip, but there is no action and no contest because the players are allowed to be in front of the kick; they’re allowed to block,” he said.

“So the moment you, as a referee, try to manipulate the ball-in-play, you’re actually doing the game a disservice. You should manage the ball out of play. Just get the ball back in play, but don’t manipulate that because the easiest way to get the ball-in-play up is to stop refereeing."

Peyper said that while World Rugby has addressed the ball-out-of-play time with the shot clocks on kicks at goal, line-outs, and scrums, referees are not implementing the new rules. The law is there, but it is not being applied.

Erasmus said, “So start controlling that, the ball out of play, and say ‘Hey, get the ball back into play’, then there will be more ball in play. You don’t want people sitting in the stands for five minutes when no action is happening. I understand people’s frustrations when it’s out of play.”