The Stockdale Paradox is a theory based on the life experiences of vice-admiral James Stockdale, the highest ranking US military officer in the infamous Hanoi Hilton prisoner of war camp during the Vietnam War.
Captured after his plane was struck by enemy fire in 1965, he was routinely tortured before his eventual release in 1973.
With no knowledge if he would ever be freed, his determination to survive and resist was fierce. He even injured his own face with the leg of a stool so he could not be used as unwilling participant in a propaganda video for the enemy.
He was one seriously tough dude.
After enduring so much horror, he was asked who were the ones who did not make it out of that traumatic POW camp?
“That’s easy,” he answered. “The optimists. They would say we’ll be out by Christmas. Then Christmas would come and go. We’ll be out by Easter. Then Easter would come and go.”
The Stockdale Paradox states that you must never confuse the faith that you will in the end prevail – which you can never afford to lose – while at the same time confronting the brutal facts of your current reality.
The last two weekends of international rugby have shown that the game is living inside its own Stockdale Paradox.
When the ball is in play, rugby is the greatest spectator sport in the world. It is beautiful to watch and glorious to play. Yet it is the game’s own laws, dictated by our governing body, that are actually stopping the amount of game time that is allowed to be played.
All games, at all levels, of rugby have long periods of players standing around waiting for the match to resume. This has led to stadiums repeatedly blaring out music to fill the far too frequent gaps in the action. Common sense would suggest this situation would be recognised by World Rugby who would change several laws with the objective being more game time and less stoppages.
If we follow Stockdale’s assessment of reality, then we have to accept that rugby’s legislators are not applying common sense.
For example, if we consider the first Test between the Springboks and Ireland which gave us a minuscule ball in play (BIP) time of just 30 minutes and 23 seconds. That means that for 49 minutes and 37 seconds there was, as they say in the classics, bugger all happening.
If we drill down deeper we find that across the entire 80 minutes, the Springboks attacked for only 15.36 minutes with Ireland attacking for 14.47 minutes. In other words, for 65 minutes and 13 seconds, which is more than two thirds of the match, there was no Irish attacking play.
Despite almost all elite professional games regularly producing BIP times similar to the Test in Pretoria, the alarm bells are not ringing. The root cause of low BIP times in all matches can be traced back to the current scrum laws which lead to a swathe of match defining penalties. These penalties have elevated the scrum to a position of pre-eminence that it was never designed to occupy.
Today’s scrum laws have also allowed coaches to select forward-dominated benches aimed at winning more scrum penalties. When added to drawn out TMO decisions, shots at goal and slowly formed lineouts, we have not just slashed BIP times but also done away with the vast majority of attacking backline set play.
The scrum must be brought back to its original purpose, “a contest for possession to restart play” and to provide the best backline attacking platform in the game.
In the 1980s and 90s, the vast majority of scrum infringements were free kicks and not penalties. Since that time, we have transformed the scrum from an attacking platform into a means of winning a penalty.
Despite demands for reform from huge sections of the games’ leading players and coaches, many scrums are still taking over two minutes to complete. The current generation of forwards refusing to bind up early is for one simple tactical reason – slow formation allows them to recover their breathing.
Slowing the game down by not binding – and with a 6-2 or 7-1 bench – means today’s forwards only play half a match, of which the ball is in play for only 15 minutes. This has drastically reduced the need for aerobic fitness within modern forward packs.
None of this is how the game was intended to be played. With less aerobic fitness required, they can carry more bulk, which allows them to create more power that can be highly dangerous in collisions. Concussion experts have highlighted that less muscle bulk and more aerobic fatigue in the forwards would reduce the force involved in collisions, which in turn would reduce brain trauma injuries.
The higher the need for aerobic fitness, the less muscle bulk the players can carry. The less muscle bulk, the less power in collisions.
So it not just BIP times that would benefit from changes to the scrum and replacement laws. Yet, once again, player safety is being compromised.
While World Rugby has suggested that in November various working groups will present recommendations to address these and other major issues, I wouldn’t be confident that they will make the necessary changes to create more BIP time.
I fear the great vice-admiral Stockdale may be right. I believe that eventually reform will come to our game, but I am not optimistic of a major reform in November.
As Stockdale said: “We are not getting out by Christmas: deal with it.”