The rugby spectator's lament is: "They've been doing it all day, ref."
In respect to provincial and international teams constantly getting away with being offside when defending, it's been more a case of: "They've been doing it all year, ref!"
Each season there is one aspect of the game that becomes cloudy. It can be second-row feeds by scrum-halves, wayward lineout throws, using decoy runners to obstruct, cleaning players out of a ruck, dragging down mauls, and the likes that are used to gain an advantage ... until the decision makers apply a clamp-down.
This season, the game has been most rubbery around Law 11 -- offside and onside in general play. Top of the list of those taking advantage of referees often ignoring their offside fiends are numerous Australian Super Rugby teams as well as the British & Irish Lions.
The most glaring examples of offside are occurring close to the tackle, ruck or maul, with defending players either constantly breaking early or encroaching the offside line to smother the first or second receiver near the breakdown.
It may be a case of being offside only by several centimetres, but for the defending team it has the desired effect of putting extra pressure on attacking players -- thwarting their opportunities to expose the opposition with quick, sharp football. That split second enables the defence to nullify an attack after only a few passes, and often turns the breakdown area into a mess. Attacking players close to the ruck -- particularly the scrum-half -- are getting used to being swamped.
There has also been a growing tendency of defenders dawdling back after several phases, to the extent that a team's defensive alignment resembles the outline of Mary Poppins' umbrella rather than a straight line across the field.
The culprits are many -- including every Super Rugby team -- but the Lions on their New Zealand tour are among the most persistent. From game one, the Lions have too often hovered on the wrong side of the offside line, and been allowed to get away with it by the referee.
The Lions are also pretty good at loitering. Their over-excitement has at times seen them penalised, but more often than not they have been excused. Good teams know what they can get away with, and they try to take advantage of any loophole, but some have been really pushing the barriers during 2017.
The NSW Waratahs have also been penalised for offside play this year, but they have regularly been able to cut down attacks from illegal positions. Then again, the Waratahs have struggled with their discipline all year -- as have the Wallabies since the 2015 Rugby World Cup. After Wallabies coach Michael Cheika recently questioned the level of fitness of the Australian Super Rugby teams, they may even be able to use as an excuse that their match conditioning is so poor they are actually physically struggling to get back onside.
Offside is a tough area to police, as the referee, whose job is made so perplexing by having to wrestle with a convoluted law book, has enough to watch out for. And if the referee penalised a team every time they were offside, the match would go on for an eternity.
But the offside law constantly being overlooked has restricted attacking opportunities, and forced numerous teams to rely on utilising moments of broken play to make a statement. Not surprisingly numerous No. 10s are now standing further back in attack to ensure they have more space and hopefully more time before the offside marauders get to them.
Some argue that it is up to the teams to stop such cynical play. Noble in nature, but still pretty naïve, as teams will do anything they can to gain that competitive edge. Such is the reality of professional sport.
So, sadly, it's up to the already frazzled referees and their assistants to enforce strictly the offside laws. Sending more players to the sinbin for repeated offside offences should wake them up -- as well as having the desired effect of reducing the number of defenders and increasing the room to do something enterprising on the rugby field.