I was just looking at Bilko's Twitter feed and he says that the Grand final lasted 53 Minutes in the first half and 58 minutes in the second! so that means over half and hour the clock was stopped due to injuries, Decide who the culprits in minor brawls and time stopped for quickly formed scrums! Its a good job the Video Ref was only used once as the game could have lasted a few minutes more! I read somewhere that they are making changes to the system next year but with games having extra time golden point next year games could last all night!

It’s true. Im fairly sure the 1998 grand final was 85 mins from start to finish. Completely different now.

Well the Aussies have taken action to stop this dawdling around, and although people moan about us slavishly following the NRL, I'm glad we have in this respect.

They can keep their Golden Point, though. At least it doesn't happen very often.

The game in Aus is being slowed down when a team is on the attack the defending team just give penalties away to slow down the attack. Then the captain decides to try and discuss the decision to slow the game down even more. The refs stop the clock to threaten them with a sin bin (that hardly ever comes), even if they don’t talk to the captain it still takes time to wave them away.

To speed the game up I’d bring in an advantage rule. If a team is offside the ref should just call “offside, advantage 6 again” the game would continue and the attacking team get 6 more tackles. If the attacking team make a mistake during the advantage you go back to the penalty. This would stop a team deliberately standing offside as they can’t slow the game down. It would almost be a free play set of six.

The other thing slowing the game down is fake “injuries” if a player goes down injured when defending and they stop the game. I’d make them play the next set without that player. A bit like the football rule when a player goes off after treatment. Again this should dissuade the defending team from slowing the game down.

On a side note. Foxtel is playing some classic games from the 90’s during the off season and it is amazing how fast the play the ball is.