Quote: SmokeyTA "If you had a tap penalty or wiping of the count for both holding down and offside, anytime anyone made a break you would simply hold them down until the ref wiped the count, then the team mate next to you can tackle the player from an offside position (because they can just hang around the ruck) wipe the count again, lay on, wipe the count. Meanwhile the defensive line organises itself and any advantage has been lost yeah you can give a penalty in that situation but we give a penalty for just one of those offences now. The point the wiping of the count rather than tap penalty would be to speed up the game and allow refs to be more consistent on judging those offences. We would lose that by allowing offside players to be punished with a wiping of the count.'"
They are different issues though. Holding down on the break is a professional foul IIRC (like last man in football) that gets you sin binned. You're also talking persistent offences, which again would result in being sin binned.
Quote: SmokeyTA "It does allow for a bigger angle, but not really in a significant way. And the angle itself isnt significant anyway. If a player kicks the ball from the behind the 20 and it goes out beyond the oppositions 20 its a 40/20 anyway.'"
The second part is fair point, but it's basically the fact that I don't believe it's a very good skill to reward being able to kick the ball 40m and bounce into touch. I think being able to kick the ball 40m and bounce into touch in a specific target area is the closest I'd go for.
Each to their own though. There's no right or wrong on this one. I think we all agree that the first one is a terrible gimmick though that goes against the principles of the game!