The Great Ruck Debate.

[kruddler]

If that really made no difference you wouldn’t see the guns on the pine.

Yep.

Every little bit of rest time counts.

Playing a second ruck and working out the relative TOG differences translates to 1 ruck sitting on the bench for one quarter of the game MORE than if you play 1 ruck.
So thats equivalent to 1 quarter worth of no rotations.
Spread that across 18 players and its close to 2 minutes of less rest a game.

However, the bigger part of that scenario is that all of the players that get 2 minutes less rest, are also picking up the slack of 1 extra player that is now not in the side due to that second ruck.
Given that player is usually a small/mid and you might have 12 of them who you would consider would be picking up the slack of that player. So 12 players doing the work of 13 (if you had 1 ruck) means they are doing the equivalent of 10 minutes more work......with 2 minutes less rest to cover that missing rotation.

So yes, the load is spread around to other players, but that load is significant in the scheme of things when you do the math on the rest of the blokes picking up the slack.