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20th November 2023
12:47pm GMT

Craig Casey executes a box-kick against Italy, at Aviva Stadium. (Photo by Harry Murphy/Sportsfile)[/caption]
"We're in the entertainment business now," said Jeffrey. "Is the game entertaining now, as it is? No. "It's got to be entertaining to watch and entertaining to play, so we need to be smarter with our laws. We're starting to do that at World Rugby, having these 'Shape of the Game' conferences. Ball in play time in the first two weeks of this World Cup [was] sadly down on the last World Cup. "There's too many kicks in the game. Can you ban box-kicking? ... I think we need to step on the gas and say, 'Yeah, let's consider all things. Let's think outside the box'."Back in 1995, when rugby was about to turn professional, the ball in play time was down at around 25 minutes. That has, slowly but surely, increased over the past 28 years. The average at the 2023 World Cup was around 34 minutes, with Ireland's quarter-final loss to New Zealand topping the chart at 41 minutes, 35 seconds. South Africa, the world champions, did not feature in the Top 10 for ball-in-play time at the tournament. All Blacks head coach Ian Foster was critical of the Boks' pool stage loss to Ireland as the ball was only in play for just over 27 minutes. One law change that could impact on box-kicks, and speed up the game, would be taking out the caterpillar rucks - player and player from the team in possession attaching onto a ruck to give the kicker space to make their play. If the kicker has less time and space to get the ball clear and airborne, it may reduce the amount of times we see box-kicks in a game. We had a slew law changes World Rugby put forward after the 2019 World Cup, many of which are now in place. It will be interesting to see what changes are coming down the pike after the recently wrapped World Cup.
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