New scrum engagement for NZ
New Zealand has been given leave by the International Rugby Board to try out a new sequence of instructions for engagement, reducing the present call from four words to three.
This testing will be done in the Air New Zealand Cup which starts this weekend.
At present the instruction to the forwards at scrum time has four words – crouch, touch, pause, engage. They are usually distinct with a pause as the referee checks that the instructions are correctly carried out.
The New Zealand experiment will drop pause and use just three words – crouch, touch, engage.
Colin Hawke, the former Test referee who now lives in Wellington and is New Zealand’s manger of high performance referees, said: “This is a trial only and it is in addition to, and separate from, the 16 experimental law variations that will apply in the Air New Zealand Cup. The decision to experiment with a three-step scrum engagement was made after much consideration and research that showed no marked decrease in the number of collapsed scrums and resets with the four-step engagement process in the Air New Zealand Cup, Rebel Sport Super 14, the Philips Tri-Nations and the Six Nations in 2007, compared to 2006.
“It was found that some players had problems with the four-step sequence as they were “primed” to engage following the touch call, and the extra call often resulted in an early engagement. Through this Air New Zealand Cup trial we will be able to determine whether the three-step sequence helps to further reduce early scrum engagements, resets, and collapsed scrums.
“We will be monitoring this experiment, as all the Air New Zealand Cup games are televised. The NZRU will provide the IRB with a report on the trial at the conclusion of the competition.”
The following scrum engagement under Law 20 1 (h) will apply in the 2008 Air New Zealand Cup:
– The referee will call crouch then touch
– The front rows crouch and using their outside arm touches the point of the opposing prop’s outside shoulder. The props then withdraw their arms.
– The referee will ensure that there is a pause until the arms of the props have been withdrawn and will then call engage. The front rows may then engage.
– The engage is not a command but an indication that the front rows may come together when ready.
So law variations continue. It’s like getting back to England in the mid-18 hundreds when every schools had its own way of playing a game generically referred to as football.
It is also interesting to see movies of matches not long ago when the forwards went down in their own time, stayed square and steady, and did not collapse.
The four-call sequence may well be unnecessary but statistics reveal that it depends on the teams playing whether or not scrums collapse and are reset.
The four Tri-Nations matches played so far reveal the following statistics:
In matches involving only New Zealand and Australia, there were 36 scrums, 3 resets and 6 collapses.
In matches involving Australia, there were 39 scrums, 16 resets and 29 collapses.
