With more than a minute remaining of the Crusaders’ 24-21 defeat to the Waratahs in Sydney at the weekend and the home team desperately hanging on despite a two-player advantage, the action stopped.
The Waratahs had won a penalty near halfway, just inside Crusaders’ territory, and general confusion appeared to reign.
Clearly, with the 13-man Crusaders mounting a concerted comeback after being 17-0 down at one stage, the Waratahs were in no hurry to keep things moving.
After all, they were eyeing a first victory over the Crusaders since 2014. The red and blacks, meanwhile, were considering three losses in a season for the first time since Scott Robertson took over in 2017.
So, rather than the match rushing to a fitting conclusion, the men in blue were happy to limp over the finish line.
As the seconds ticked by, referee Ben O’Keeffe told the Waratahs: “We’re re-starting no matter what – depending on what you’re doing. What are you doing?”
Wasting time, mainly, before halfback Jake Gordon kicked the ball into touch which led to O'Keeffe's final whistle which in turn launched celebrations among the Waratahs not seen since they won their sole Super Rugby title eight years ago.
The Crusaders did not deserve to win the match due to a general sloppiness foreshadowed in their recent victory over the Rebels in Melbourne. They added an ill-discipline to that malaise with lock Hamish Dalzell red carded for a high tackle on Michael Hooper (for which he has been banned for three weeks).
That aside, watching the strange denouement to the match brought Rassie Erasmus to mind.
Erasmus, the Springboks director of rugby who masterminded South Africa’s World Cup victory in 2019 before reaching a new level of notoriety during the British and Irish Lions tour in 2021 when accusing the match officials of various things (for which he was sanctioned with the metaphorical slap with a wet bus ticket), now appears to be viewed as an incorrigible rogue by the English media, and writes a newspaper column for the Daily Mail.
Erasmus’ latest was about three things that could improve the game. He wrote about the need for two referees to monitor the breakdown, which has been trialled before, and an expert scrum referee who might run on and off for the set piece, but it was his explanation of the need for a “shot clock” for goalkickers which resonated the most.
Goalkickers are allowed 60 seconds for a penalty and 90 seconds for a conversion, but Erasmus noted: “We are regularly involved in matches where the kicker goes 20 seconds over the allowance.
“If there are six kicks at goal in a match, that could waste two minutes of ball-in-play time. Put a countdown clock on the big screens and if the time runs out then they lose the kick.”
He added, in an aside which could have been written specifically about the end of the Waratahs v Crusaders match: “If we want to see more ball-in-play time then we need to make sure there is less ball-out-of-play time. If a team goes into a huddle before a lineout, stop the clock. If a guy goes down to tie his shoelaces or take a drink before a scrum, stop the clock.
“We could easily increase the ball-in-play time by between seven and 10 minutes by enforcing the laws as they are written and again no one will have to adapt to any law changes.”
Sanzaar, the administrators of Super Rugby, have shown a willingness to embrace change, but sometimes it is misdirected.
The addition of a rugby league style goal-line dropout instead of 5m scrums has always struck as an odd decision; a case of changing something that didn’t need changing. In fact, it has had the predictable effect of limiting the influence of an attacking team’s dominant scrum, and, like it or not, the set piece remains an important part of the game.
But a shot clock, while not necessarily ridding the game of all time wasting, would add a new element - one that would engage the crowd and television audience, the latter is important.
It's an easy fix which would appear to have no downsides. It might even bring about more exciting finishes. What's not to like?
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