Rugby chief wants 10-yard rule back

Rugby Football Union chief executive Ian Ritchie has called for football to bring back the 10-yard rule in a bid to clamp down on player dissent. A longstanding sanction in rugby, the 10-yard rule was borrowed by English football for four seasons before being abandoned by global governing body FIFA in 2005. Unusually amongst leading British sports administrators, Ritchie has experience of both football and rugby. He was on the English Football League board before taking charge at Twickenham and he formerly sat on the English Football Association’s council. “I like the 10-yard rule in rugby,” Ritchie said Tuesday. “The minute somebody in rugby starts disagreeing with the referee their team is marched another 10 yards back. “I have always thought ‘why can’t that be applied to football?”’ Ritchie is also a fan of having referees wired for sound, now standardprocedure in major rugby matches, with spectators able to listen in during the course of a game.