A study done by an Australian rugby statistician has shown the large amount of time lost during a rugby game - more than half the game, in most cases - with shots for goal and scrums being the main culprits.
Ian Smith did a study on last year's Super 15 competition and also looked at statistics used in the last Rugby World Cup.
Playing time is lost in many ways but the main time-wasters are scrum, lineout, penalty, penalty attempt, conversion attempt and dropout.
The average time the ball was in play during the 2012 Super 15 was 35min 30sec, and at the 2011 World Cup it was 35min 25sec.
In the Super 15, one game had the ball in action for just 28min 20sec. The longest time was just under 45min.
Smith viewed the ball as being in play when one player was engaged in an activity that had the potential to result in a change to the score.
In the Super 15, there were just under 17 scrums per game and about 23 lineouts.
Smith said from the data he looked at, most of the stoppage time occurred at scrums, lineouts and attempts at goal.
He said trying to make savings at lineout time was pretty hard to do, as players moved to the lineout.
But he felt time could be saved at both the scrum and goal attempts.
The combined loss of time during attempts at penalty goal and conversions was more than 18min in last year's Super 15. At scrums, more than 13min per game was lost.
An attempt at a penalty took an average of more than 88sec, and kickers took nearly a minute to prepare to kick the ball. The actual kick took less than 5sec.
Preparing for a conversion was worse in terms of taking up time.
Once the try was scored, a conversion took more than 90sec. More than 70% of that time was taken by the kicker picking up the ball from the try-scorer and then preparing to kick the conversion. The actual kick took less than 4sec.
Scrums in last year's Super 15 season also ate up plenty of time.
An average scrum took 52sec last year.
Breaking down the scrum into three phases, the lost time came mostly from the time taken for the referee to get the scrum under control up to the engage call.
Further analysis on the scrum showed just over two-thirds of scrums have a successful outcome.
Smith suggested the time the ball was in play could be easily increased by some simple adjustments.
When a penalty was attempted, time should be stopped when the captain signalled the shot at goal and then started again when the ball was kicked. That could save 52sec a kick and, with an average of seven penalty attempts a game, about 6min could be saved.
With conversions, time could be off from when the try was scored until the ball was kicked. That would save about 5min a game, on average.
Scrums were more difficult, as each pack, with eight different moving parts, was hard to control.
But doing away with the hit and penalising time-wasting by teams should help to lessen scrum time. Even if 15sec was saved at every scrum, then that would bring about an extra 4min a game.
He said if these changes were brought about, an additional 8min 30sec could be added to the game.
