What If We Brought Back the Ancient 'Goal From Mark' Rule?

Reinstating an obsolete rugby law abolished in 1977 could improve the modern game, suggests Jamie Wall.

New year, new rules, new controversy. This time the lawmakers, to their credit, have taken aim at concussions by cracking down on dangerous tackles and challenges. However, the biggest gripe so far from fans has been the outcome-based decision-making process that refs have had to implement.

Think about it: if you’ve been clobbered and the fate of the guy who tackled you depends on how quickly you get up, what would you do? Common sense would dictate staying on the deck until you can see the ref reaching for his pocket.

This is bad. As in, it could turn into soccer bad. Maybe that’s a stretch, but any potential threat of the sort of play-acting seen in the roundball code happening needs to be dealt with swiftly. Which is why the reintroduction of a long lost rule could go do a lot of help in safeguarding against this threat.

The goal from mark was a method of scoring that was done away with in 1977. It simply meant that claiming a mark wasn’t just restricted to inside one’s own 22, but the entire field of play. If a player were to claim one close enough to the opposition’s posts, you could have a drop or place kick at goal for three points.

Goals from marks were incredibly rare; the last one recorded in a test match happened six years before they were abolished. In a freaky turn of events, brothers Don and Ian Clarke scored one each both for and against the All Blacks in consecutive seasons, but that was in the early 60’s.

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Any player on the field can claim a mark, so how does potentially seeing a prop lining up a toe hack from halfway help reduce concussions? Well, hopefully it’ll mean that we’ll never have to see it happen, because it’ll stop teams putting up the sort of high kicks that result in disasters like Elliot Daly’s abominable challenge against Argentina recently.

Risking a box kick that will come down in your own half all of a sudden becomes far more dangerous, scoreboard-wise. Unless you can pick out the guys that you know for sure don’t have a hope in hell of landing a shot at goal, it’d be far more safe to keep the ball in hand or kick for touch. Because really, apart from halfbacks, who would miss box kicks?

Reduce the contests and you’ll reduce the dangerous challenges. Reduce the dangerous challenges and you’ll reduce the injuries, cards, suspensions – and most importantly, the amount of time refs spend making up their mind on what to do. Plus the ball spends more time in hand rather than up in the air and one day, maybe, we might be treated to an unlikely shot at goal from a tight forward.

It might seem crazy to resurrect a law that was done away with 40 years ago, but when the other potential option is this, we can never be too vigilant.