Law Discussion: Fixing the scrum ii
Yesterday we discussed scrum problems and wondered if they could be fixed or had to be accepted as part of rugby life. We asked for suggestions and here are the ideas of some.
If anybody else has ideas/suggestions, please, send them to pauld@365digital.co.za.
1. David Brown
Having played hooker in a small pack myself and having a fast strike, I won many tightheads despite having a weaker scrum.
Two points which I feel may benefit scrumming:
(A) Straight put-in at the scrum
As mentioned in your article, no emphasis from the referees that the ball is put in straight in the scrum has allowed hookers to bulk up over the years and are often in the similar mould to props now. By monitoring this there would be a risk for teams playing merely a shoving hooker as they could lose ball because of a slow strike. This may help in reducing pack size and therefore the amount of force being exerted in scrums and accordingly make them more stable.
As it stands many great hookers from the past (e.g. Uli Schmidt) would be deemed too small for front rows. On a personal level I also like it as introduces a bit more skill rather than just brute force to the scrum time.
(B) Removal of the hit
Currently teams rely on getting a good hit on engage to have a decent scrum. This results in extreme force being placed on the backs of the front row as well as causing many collapses resulting from either poorly timed engagements going straight to ground or from teams intentionally collapsing the scrum in order to have another opportunity at the engagement when the scrum is reset. If the hit engagement was scrapped with a slow bind this would then require pure scrumming technique as opposed to reaction time to the refs call to engage. A more stable bind should lead to fewer collapses and fewer injuries, furthermore it would mean technique and power of props can be better utilised.
2. Lee Grant of Sydney, Australia
Scrum collapses are a blight on our game. I’m no scrum guru, just an ex-flank who was onside only at an occasional kick-off, but I’d warrant if the following four matters were addressed (the first two are connected), there would be fewer collapses – and yet the dominant scrum would still dominate.
(A) De-power the hit
The hit on engage should be de-powered because it has a built-in collapse element. Also, the importance of not missing the power hit has given rise to a spate of early engagements and consequent free kicks. This timing issue has added another element that referees can get wrong at scrum time and they do.
To those who would complain that depowering the hit would take away one of the great traditions of our game: it isn’t. The power hit is a relatively recent phenomenon which has become more prevalent in the professional era. Around the time of the first Rugby World Cup the engage was simply that, and before then the front rows folded into each other.
In those earlier times the scrum with superior power after the engage, and better technique, still dominated and the scrums had a higher completion rate. Also front rowers did not have to absorb the power of modern hits and have their neck discs damaged.
(B) Make the scrums crouch closer to each other
Scrums crouch too far away from each other and the excess distance encourages the power hit. Front rowers have to have their feet back far enough to be in a position to push forward (with their weight on the front of their feet) but that’s all the distance they need. The six heads of the front rowers should be at least aligned and there could be a case to trial the touching of necks before the put in with the commands being: Crouch, touch (necks), bind, push.
(C) Enforce the law of throwing the ball into the scrum straight
It is no wonder that there are bajada no-hooking scrums these days because the defending hooker has no chance to compete for the ball; he may as well push. The only tightheads one sees these days are when 2nd rowers accidentally kick the ball forward as it is thrown into their feet by their scrumhalf.
The throw into the scrum should be straight. It beggars belief that referees tutt tutt and wag their fingers at hookers who throw the ball 15 metres into the line-out slightly off line, when they allow scrum halves a minute later to throw the ball 1 metre into the scrum 20 degrees skew. This would take two weekends to fix up if referees had the will to do so, but they don’t.
(D) Make the props engage squarely
Tweak the laws so that all four props should be required to engage squarely, not just be in a position to do so. One often notices that the loosehead prop is bound to his hooker in such a way that his chest is facing more towards the opposing hooker instead of the opposing tighthead prop. Guess what direction he will be directing his force to on the hit – and will this non-square hit by the loosehead prop tend to make more scrums collapse, or not?
Make the loosehead prop engage squarely and then if he can bore in after the square hit to wheel the scrum, good for him. It’s the skew angle of his hit that is one of the collapse problems.
3. Dave Bull of New Zealand
I greatly appreciated your article of 6 July.
What is not clear to me, is whether scrumming is more or less of a problem at lower levels – say between the best club or school teams?
If it is not a problem there, then I would be asking what incentives professional players have to collapse scrums.
4. Spencer Ryan of the UK
If the IRB wants to stick to the current scrum laws, a simple improvement would be to allow the props to place their (free) hands on the ground (like flankers do when they scrum). Surely this will help the scrum to stay up.
In the odd middle-aged friendly game I still play (in the front row), if it wasn’t for us using our free hands (loosehead left hand, tighthead right hand), every scrum would be reset. More so, having a hand to rest on would decrease the occurrence of injuries as the scrums are 1) less likely to collapse and 2) gives the props some support when the scrums go down.
5. Waldo Booysen
Here is my suggestion: make it illegal for the tighthead prop to pull down the loosehead, e.g. Werner Kruger vs Wikus Blaauw in the Super 14 final. Castrogiovanni did it last year and Owen Franks doesn’t stop doing it. The best tightheads are straight on the hit e.g. Carl Hayman, Pieter de Villiers, Cobus Visagie. Most recently Ben Alexander and Euan Murray, Adam Jones and Jannie du Plessis.
If this is implemented you’ll get tightheads with shoulders above their waists and no collapses from their side. If the scrum goes down it will be like in the old day where a loosehead gets penalised and that’s it (He wont get a bind if he can’t take the hit).
6. Peter Shortell of Cheltenham, England
“Talk to men of not so long ago and they will say that scrums hardly collapsed in their day.”
Was there ever a Golden Age? The very first international match was disrupted by a long dispute over the setting of a scrummage. In his History of the Laws of Rugby Football (up to 1948) Vice-Admiral Sir Percy Royds devoted 50 pages to the scrummage, and no more than 14 to any other phase. The problems were different, but it has always been a difficult phase.
“How to fix it? Old players say deregulate and go back to letting the players doing their thing. Put the ball in straight and have proper hookers.”
You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, which is another way of saying you cannot uninvent the bajada.
I have two suggestions:
(A) Props cannot grip on modern shirts, so the tighthead usually grips his opponents arm. If it is true that a long bind makes for a more stable scrum, then props should have shirts that allow gripping.
(B) Currently the ball is supposed to be fed in as soon as the packs engage. That means that if a team wins the hit, it is moving forward just as the ball is thrown in. This further means that even if the ball is thrown along the original midline, by the time it is played that line has moved and the ball appears to have been thrown in crookedly. A straight feed is therefore not in itself the solution.
In a Tug of War competition, pullers are told to “Take the Strain” so that the referee can check that the markers on the rope are correctly positioned before teams can pull. In rugby that would translate to having a mandatory pause AFTER the engagement. I am told a firm hit locks the scrum best, and so we do not want to throw it out, but if the packs were required to be steady before the ball could be thrown in, they would have the opportunity to sort out any minor misalignments.
Or of course I could be talking complete nonsense.
