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Nowell and Slade dream up wacky law tweaks for Exeter sevens event

(Photo by Red Bull Elevate)

England and Exeter duo Jack Nowell and Henry Slade have come up with an intriguing set of attack-minded rules for next month’s Red Bull Elevate touch rugby sevens tournament at Sandy Park.

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The concept is to reward attacking play and make the game faster to increase the fan experience – and the planned tweaks to the traditional rugby laws should provide a feast of entertainment at the June 3 event that will serve as Nowell and Slade’s testimonial at the Chiefs.

Eight teams made up of both rugby stars and sporting celebrities, including the likes of Freddie Steward and Jason Fox as well as Thom and Max Evans, will compete on the day.

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Among the law alterations are different points for where a try is scored, ball cannon restarts, keeping two players on the pitch who have never played before, and also keeping a minimum of one female player per team on the pitch at all times.

Nowell, who is joining French club La Rochelle next season, said: “Henry and I are incredibly excited to bring Red Bull Elevate to Sandy Park.

“We have had a lot of fun developing the new tournament rules and have a great line-up of teams set for plenty of high-intensity matches. We look forward to seeing everyone there and promise an unforgettable day of rugby.”

Red Bull Elevate full tournament rules:
1. Standard seven-a-side touch rugby rules with five-touch turnover;

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2. If a player on the attacking team makes a mistake that results in a turnover, they have to leave the field of play and can only return when a try has been scored;

3. The try area has been split into three scoring zones which equal one, two and three points – one point for touchline to the 15-metre line, two points for the 15-metre line to posts, three points for scoring under the posts;

4. Circular zones for conversions across the width of the pitch – three points for the circle between touchline and the 15-metre line, two points for the circle between the 15-metre and posts, one point for the circle between posts;

5. A ball cannon will be used to start and restart the game after a score;

6. Two players on the pitch must have never played rugby before and if they score points, the score is worth double;

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7. There must be always a minimum of one female player on the pitch;

8. If you kick the ball directly to a player on your team who scores points, the score is worth double.

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J
JW 56 minutes ago
‘The problem with this year’s Champions Cup? Too many English clubs’

Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.


Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.


So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).


You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.


I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?

120 Go to comments
f
fl 4 hours ago
‘The problem with this year’s Champions Cup? Too many English clubs’

"Right, so even if they were the 4 worst teams in Champions Cup, you'd still have them back by default?"

I think (i) this would literally never happen, (ii) it technically couldn't quite happen, given at least 1 team would qualify via the challenge cup, so if the actual worst team in the CC qualified it would have to be because they did really well after being knocked down to the challenge cup.

But the 13th-15th teams could qualify and to be fair I didn't think about this as a possibility. I don't think a team should be able to qualify via the Champions Cup if they finish last in their group.


Overall though I like my idea best because my thinking is, each league should get a few qualification spots, and then the rest of the spots should go to the next best teams who have proven an ability to be competitive in the champions cup. The elite French clubs generally make up the bulk of the semi-final spots, but that doesn't (necessarily) mean that the 5th-8th best French clubs would be competitive in a slimmed down champions cup. The CC is always going to be really great competition from the semis onwards, but the issue is that there are some pretty poor showings in the earlier rounds. Reducing the number of teams would help a little bit, but we could improve things further by (i) ensuring that the on-paper "worst" teams in the competition have a track record of performing well in the CC, and (ii) by incentivising teams to prioritise the competition. Teams that have a chance to win the whole thing will always be incentivised to do that, but my system would incentivise teams with no chance of making the final to at least try to win a few group stage matches.


"I'm afraid to say"

Its christmas time; there's no need to be afraid!

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