Actually the removal of rucking from the game and professionalism aren’t tied together at all. Rugby went professional in 1995, rucking still existed into this millenium. Here’s SST writer Richard Boock’s column on rucking (http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/opin … -off-thugs):

[quote:10blethm]Rucking, long celebrated as the traditional New Zealand method for winning possession at the breakdown, has also doubled as the main theatre of operations for those oafs attracted to the game by the promise of barely-contained violence. High profile victims of the approach include Welshman JPR Williams, opened up by All Black studs at Bridgend in 1978, and Englishman Phil de Glanville, sliced apart by New Zealand forwards in 1993.

As an excuse for trampling over anyone in the vicinity of the tackled ball area with no regard for safety, rucking was one of the rugby thug’s most dependable alibis. I can still remember, in the early 1990s, the sight of Otago flanker Phil Young following a provincial match against Waikato in Hamilton; the loosie virtually unrecognisable after a deranged Mooloo forward had tap-danced on his face. The scariest part? It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.

People can dream all they like about an imaginary time when rugby players used to ruck properly. Truth is, the further back you look, the worse the brutality. If it wasn’t for the advent of television and video scrutiny, the game would still be a favourite haunt for the unhinged and the reprobate. And it’s not as if rucking’s unheard of anymore. Fullback Luke Wilson needed 130 stitches and 4 1/2 hours of surgery last week after being “rucked” in a South Otago club game.

That the rest of the rugby world is now unanimously opposed to the practice (in anything but the most sanitised form) shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anyone, least of all Kiwis. New Zealand only has itself to blame for the perception that rucking is nothing but a euphemism for malicious trampling, stamping and kicking. To gasp aloud now about a claimed misconception is to ignore the manner in which it has been abused by so many of our countrymen.[/quote:10blethm]

Comparisons between rucking in rugby and fighting in hockey are quite apt actually. You get the same justification for it (doesn’t hurt anyone), which is clearly true for neither rugby not fighting in hockey. In rugby they changed the rules to penalise players holding onto the ball rather than having the opposing team being allowed to ruck them. The potential is there for the same thing in ice hockey. If you look at NHL fights, they’re not like the fights that we have here, where people get frustrated and explode, they’re normally conscious decisions by teams to fight. Changing the rules could squish that if the league wanted to.