 214 pages 40 illustrations Just a few of the many topics covered:  In-goal pressure - score or no-score?  The (intentional?) high tackle  Indecision is fatal.  Early tackle - deliberate or accidental?  Front-row follies The authors in action   |
And plenty of referees - from internationals to beginners - agree. Here’s what England’s Chris White says:
And his colleague Wayne Barnes (who also refereed in Rugby World Cup 07) agrees:
Former international referee Peter Hughes
What pearls? Paul Williams (a student who has refereed at junior level for three seasons) found plenty:
And here’s Ian Tempest of the Liverpool Society:
Plus Robin Dewson, of the East Midlands Society:
And Max Barnard, in his third year with the Manchester Society:
Matt O’Grady, of the Bristol Society, found the illustrations especially helpful:
Here’s how Buzz McClain, an American referee and senior editor of the US magazine Rugby, described it:
The Independent on Sunday made it their ‘Book of the Week’:
Buzz McClain liked this advice from Ed: A final comment from a Nevada referee, Don Pattalock: How to get it. Only
by mail order - it's not in the
bookshops. We're publishing it ourselves, as a non-profit venture. So the
price is low. Price in the UK is just £7.99 per copy, including postage and packing.
From outside the UK: To Europe - £8.50 per copy
To Rest of the World, surface mail -
£9.50 per copy
To
Rest of the World, airmail -
£10.50 per copy
(Bulk discounts are available to Referee Societies - email here for details) Payment Method 1 - Post me a cheque Send your cheque, payable to Torbay Mailing Services Ltd., to:
Torbay Mailing Services Ltd
P.O. Box 11
PAIGNTON Devon TQ3 2BF
All payments in sterling (GB pounds), please. We
can accept sterling cheques or postal orders, sent to the address above, and drawn on a UK bank.
Payment Method 2 - use PayPal  Whether or not you are in the You don't need to use a personal PayPal account. All you need is a credit card. Just send me an email here, telling me what you want. I'll need to know if you're outside the UK. |
||||||||||||
 Author's Notes |
Nutshell: Everything you never knew about the game, including what William Webb Ellis didn't do. "A brisk dash through 150 years of rugby - with plenty of humour thrown in," - BRISTOL EVENING POST |
||||||||||||
| A Player's Guide to the Laws  Author's Notes |
Nutshell: A
Player's Guide to the Laws
does exactly what it says on the cover - in the
player's language. “I
simply had to read it.
Invaluable." |
|
Rugby Union is the only
game whose players actually boast they don’t understand all
its laws.(This
phenomenon wouldn’t last ten seconds if they were playing,
for instance,
poker.) As a result of their slap-happy approach, players sometimes
miss
valuable opportunities (Advantage is the most obvious) and often they
concede a
hatful of penalties. That’s why I wrote this book. It’s a
user-friendly guide to the laws - not
just useful but interesting, even entertaining. It covers everything
from the
demands of the tackle (how immediate is
‘immediate’?) to the mysteries of
off-side/on-side and exactly what it takes to score a try (or fail to
score).
Because the laws keep changing, the book is always updated. And because
players
prefer pictures to words, the text is generously and vividly
illustrated,
showing just where the game can go wrong (or right). At any level of the
game,
there’s an unwritten law that says: It’s
even more fun when you win. Well
- winning rugby starts here. (Why
me? Because, in 30
years with the whistle, mostly deep in the grassroots, I reckon I saw
it
all: the
good, the bad and the downright bizarre. Would you believe that, in a
match I
was refereeing, a touch judge complained to me that buckshot kept
falling on
him from a nearby game shoot? It happened. Also, I learned a lot as the
writer
on the RFU team that rewrote the lawbook. Our version, called The
Laws In
Plain English, shines through the International Rugby
Board’s new
plain-language lawbook.) |
To see other Derek Robinson website pages, please click:
Homepage The RFC Trilogy (WW1) The RAF Quartet (WW2)
The Double Agent Trilogy Other Novels Bristol Books
Availability of the books.
Rugby: A Player's Guide to the Laws is available from online and High Street sellers. Run With the Ball
should be available via second hand dealers.The following websites maye useful for tracking down both
new and second-hand copies.
Amazon UK Amazon USA Fantastic Fiction Foyles
Other websites you may find of interest:
eRugbyNews.com Wikipedia IMDB The Aerodrome Forum LibraryThing.com
