Scrumming: Start small

“Look after the pence and the pounds will look after themselves.” Your mother told you that many years ago, and perhaps it applies to scrumming as well. We are starting from the top instead of from the bottom and continually treat symptoms instead of root causes.

Michelangelo said it with more posh: “Perfection consists in attention to trifles, but perfection is not a trifle.” perhaps we have let some of the essential ingredients of a scrum become overlooked trifles.

Two social scientists in the USA, James Wilson and George Kelling, decided that crime should start from the bottom up – from fare dodging and urinating in public rather than from murder, rape and larceny. Under mayor Rudy Giuliani and police chief William Bratton applied the bottom up approach it was claimed that they solved much of the crime problem in New York by doing so.

Attention to detail could have beneficial results in scrumming as well.

To some the problem started in 1977, the year when the free kick replaced the penalty for many “technical offences”. Up till then the free kick was for the mark/fair catch only. Now it was introduced for infringements which used to be penalties. Two of these directly affected scrumming. Foot up and skew feed became free kicks. They used to be penalties. They could decide the outcome of matches; from 1977 that was no longer the case.

Reducing the punishment suggested that the “crime” was no longer as serious. This changed scrumming.

There developed the theory – mainly in the land of rugby league – that the scrums was just a means of restarting the game, not part of the essence of the game as it had always been. As the scrum became devalued so scrum infringements became so devalued they were ignored.

The IRB made brave statements about putting the ball in straight – foot-up was well and truly dead – but little attention was paid to that.

Added to the attitude to scrumming was the invention of the power scrum in Argentina – the Bajada scrum, invented by Francisco Ocampo in the early 1980s. This was based on pushing rather than hooking.

Allowing foot-up and the skew feed plus the change to the shove made that special rugby breed, the hooker, redundant. Up till then rugby had two scores – the match result and the tighthead tally. Now tightheads are rare enough to be an accident. In the nine November Tests there has been one tighthead and that came from shove rather than hook. Front rows have bee come powerful places – six against six, not four against four, and a sincere effort by the IRB to make scrumming safer, but as long as it collapses at the current rate, it will continue to be dangerous, a serious problem in rugby that is not just an aesthetic problem.

This year the IRB has instructed referees to apply the laws properly at the tackle, offside, obstruction and scrum. It emphasised over and over that this was not a change in law just application of existing law, a tightening up, greater attention to detail, and the IRB believes that this has been beneficial to the game.

But it would seem that the scrum details are still not all that important. Instead we go to the engagement process and slow it down. We are then happy that it produced fewer resets in the Super 14 – fewer, not none. And then came Australia against Wales and Ireland against Samoa, not a renowned scrumming side, a scrumming mess.

The laws (see below) still require a straight feed and a patient foot. Perhaps if they were applied, rugby would get back to having hookers who hooked and so less thrust in the front rows.

Secondly, has the staged engagement really helped? It started in 1999 with Crouch Pause Engage. Then in 2007 it moved to Crouch Touch Pause Engage. Touch was brought in to ensure that the front rows were not too far apart and thus tempted to charge in. This year referees were instructed to have good pauses between each instruction. (The law say quaintly: “The ‘engage’ call is not a command but an indication that the front rows may come together when ready.” All frightfully genteel.)

One effect of the elongated, staged engagement is that it primes the front rows, They are not allowed to charge but instead there is a hit. A charge is not a charge when it is a hit, apparently. Teams actually get punished if they do no hit, if they fade on the hit. They are expected to hit. There these eager forwards wait, straining at the referee’s leash as pressure builds up behind them, and then catapult into their opponents. Get it slightly wrong and they fall down.

The old method in days before the collapsing of the scrum was that the front rows came together in their own time and when they had folded into one another the jostling would start. The dropping the scrum was humiliating, not, as now, a tactic.

It was interesting that Alain Rolland penalised teams for repeated infringement if their engaged too soon. Perhaps if we went back to penalties for foot-up, crooked feed and charging in, it would go further in solving the problem than the tense call to arms.

Would that make for more penalties?

Not necessarily at all. If there were penalties, not free kicks, for foot-up, skew feed and charging in, then perhaps they would be far less likely to happen. Now it does not matter all that much. If the result of a match depended on it, it would matter all right.

There is a lot to think about. And when we think about it let’s give lots of credit to the IRB for trying its level best to make the scrums safer and also for introducing the best tested and most transparent changes to the laws of the game in the history of the game.

But let’s not forget detail. And there are other details that need attention – where and how to bind, a scrum that is steady and square. But that is for another day.

Laws

Law 20.6 (d) The scrum half must throw in the ball straight along the middle line, so that it first touches the ground immediately beyond the width of the nearer prop’s shoulders.
Sanction: Free Kick

Law 20 DEFINITIONS
The middle line is an imaginary line on the ground in the tunnel beneath the line where the shoulders of the two rows of players meet.

20.8 FRONT-ROW PLAYERS
(a) Striking before the throw-in (‘foot up’). All front row players must place their feet to leave a clear tunnel. Until the ball has left the scrum half’s hands, they must not raise or advance a foot. They must not do anything to stop the ball being thrown in to the scrum correctly or touching the ground at the correct place.
Sanction: Free Kick
(b) Striking after the throw-in. Once the ball touches the ground in the tunnel, any front row player may use either foot to try to win possession of the ball.

Law 20.1 (h) A crouched position is the extension of the normal stance by bending the knees sufficiently to move into the engagement without a charge.
(i) Charging. A front row must not form at a distance from its opponents and rush against them. This is dangerous play.
Sanction: Penalty kick