English referees killing the game

OK, over the weekend I watched most of the H-cup matches as well as the ANZ Cup semi-finals. One thing was noticeable - I wish I'd taken stats in fact - that the English referees seemed to blow far more often than any other nation's referees. This new, stricter interpretation of Law 15 it appears: there were certainly more penalties for going to ground in those matches as I saw it - although there were penalties for it in many of the others too.

So, to find out more about Law 15 I went and looked it up. To save you the effort, here's a link to law 15. Subsection 7: forbidden practices is what you're looking for. You can't fall over on the tackled player, or on other players lying on the ground after the tackle. Not "you can under no circumstances go to ground" which seems to be the current interpretation.

Law 16.2a is really clearer about the situation: All players forming, joining or taking part in a ruck must have their heads and shoulders higher than their feet. Failure to do so? That would be a free kick, not a penalty. Mind you, 16.2d says they must be all on their feet (but heads and shoulders could be lower) and that's a penalty.

But law 15 isn't the right place to blame unless they've renumbered with the ELVs, and you can argue that if they join the ruck on their feet and with their heads and shoulders up, and then go to ground and stop playing the ball, they haven't done anything wrong.

So on what grounds are the English referees blowing the crap out of the game? Why?