The Six Nations has abolished a long-standing tradition of forcing home teams to wear their alternate strips in instances of kit clashes during this year’s championship.
The onus in the Six Nations – and the Five Nations before it – had traditionally been on the home side to change their jerseys in the event of a clash but Telegraph Sport understands that the protocol, which has existed for over 75 years, was reversed ahead of this year’s Six Nations as part of wider plans to modernise the championship.
Sure, it’s different, by why is it modern? Someone’s got to change and the allocation of who it is is neither modern nor archaic.
Twats.
It’s just common sense that the tradition is that the home team changes. They are always going to have the change strip in the clubhouse somewhere.
I once played in a pre-season warm-up/trials match where the opposition didn’t turn up. So we played against ourselves and one team played with their shirt sleeves rolled up.
The disability RL last summer was remarkable for using two different strips within the same team – I think you could only touch tackle some players and rugby tackle others so you needed to know what was allowed.
In future the teams will be differentiatef by one playing in Pride Rainbow stripes and the other in Trans Pride light blue.
They were going to introduce compulsory BLM strips, but New Zealand objected.
Bongo,
Andrew C probably knows the details better than me but in age grade RU above a certain age you wear different coloured shorts and can only be tap tackled.
As to the question of strips. I’m surprised they haven’t gone down the club and soccer route of having home and away strips for the 6N so that they further bleed gullible fans.
Slightly OT: did anyone see that story about Twickenham declaring no alcohol zones but not making it clear. Apparently one guy had to drink 4 pints of Guinness before he could take his seat.
“Bongo,
Andrew C probably knows the details better than me but in age grade RU above a certain age you wear different coloured shorts and can only be tap tackled.”
A friend of mine was in Australia and played a game, unaware of the age grade rules and smashed into someone who he was only supposed to touch. He reported that a fight broke out where the colour of the shorts didn’t seem to matter.
There are different coloured shorts depending on which code you’re playing and where. It seems more popular in Rugby league as I guess the contested scrums, line outs, rucks and mauls can be problematic. There’s a Rugby League team even down south where I am. Annoyingly I am in the Gold Shorts category meaning basically it’s (tag) touch. My spirit sinks at not being able to smash into people although my body is probably grateful.
35-50 White or black – full on tackling
50-59 – Red – holding tackles only
60-69 – Gold – touch to tackle and remove tag to be tackled
There are green and blue shorts for 70-79 and blue for 80+. The rules are the same as for gold so I guess those shorts are just to show off how old you are and still playing.
If some geezer is playing rugger at 80+ he should be allowed to whack anyone he likes
. Kudos.
Thank you BiND and AndrewC, I never knew that about age graded RU rules. What an enlightening place is this corner of the electron IP packets niverse.