World Rugby rules out immediate breakdown law changes

Smith, who was part of the All Blacks coaching staff during their 2011 and 2015 Rugby World Cup triumphs, disagrees with both Jones and Dawson, and doesn’t feel Italy’s tactics remotely warrant a change in the sport’s laws.

“I talked to [referee] Jonathan Kaplan before the game to ask whether he would call if it was a ruck or not, but he wouldn’t play ball”.

What they could not have imagined was how long they would get with it being effective.

Moody wonders if Jones’ rant was to deflect from another poor first half, which saw England trail 10-5 at half-time. Look how mystified the English guys are when the Italians pull this off.

England head coach Eddie Jones was infuriated by the Azzurri’s strategy of refusing to compete for possession after a tackle had been made, thereby ensuring no ruck was formed and there was no offside line.

Jones urged fans to ask for refunds but an RFU spokeswoman said NO ONE had complained or demanded their money back. “You haven’t seen a game of rugby”.

“If that’s rugby, I’m going to retire”.

“We had to adapt and the best way to do that was to either play through the middle with the forwards on a pick-and-go, get some momentum and then shift the ball, or just pop it off the 9”, the 23-year-old added.

“When Eddie said it’s not rugby, I say what’s not rugby is the judo rolling people at rucks and mauls that he does”.

“Against a superior team and a rugby nation with infinitely more resources, Italy went down fighting and scheming and plotting”, the former England and British and Irish Lions centre added.

Former England global Matt Dawson also ripped the Italians. “My first reaction is that disappointed to lose because we gave ourselves a chance, 70 minutes into the game it was 17-15”.

“It wasn’t fair criticism”. We were there to try and win a game of rugby, and we’re the underdogs in all our games. We are not going to roll over and we are going to fight.

“Italy wanted to do it because they wanted to slow the game down to make it more static and stop us doing what we want to do, which is to speed the game up and move Italy around a bit”.

There was no sign of such a response yesterday from World Rugby with the prevailing view being that England, despite running out comfortable winners, should have been able to solve the problem themselves on the field without help from the law-makers.

The bonus-point victory takes England back to the top of the standings and they remain on course for a second straight Grand Slam ahead of their final two matches against Scotland and Ireland. “You’re not just going to break down teams from minute one”.