The scrum law change debate

Two props give you their views

We have received quite a response to the announcement of the proposed IRB scrum and breakdown law changes, with particular attention given to the scrum and the likely introduction of the word 'touch' between 'hold' and 'engage'.

Some support the moves, others don't. But there is no doubt that the announcement on Wednesday has front row clubs everywhere engaged in lively debates over all three mealtime pies, and props have been emerging from the bottoms of mauls, the cellars of breweries and the cupboards of kitchens everywhere to give their weighty opinions.

Below are the opposing views of two props still playing the game, as one of the sport's most traditional features teeters on the brink of being altered forever. But for good or bad?

'I AGREE'

For several years the top-six division of the Cambridge University inter-collegiate RUFC leagues (equivalent to experienced and physical school-level competition) have tested "Law labs", more complicated potential amendments to the Laws or interpretation of rugby.

The amendments proposed last year were of such practicality and effectiveness that we are keeping them up and I am glad to see them coming to the attention of the IRB (although I don't pre-suppose the exact course that the proposals have travelled through the various levels of the game since there inception.)

In detail, as a front rower, I have found the new rules for engagement we have played with, when refereed correctly, ensure that more thought and time go into the set up and engagement at the scrum.

This has always usually been an irritation for myself finding the opposition prop isn't straight and my Second Row is far too eager to get going (or else is having a undeserved rest, leaning against my buttock).

This would leave me in an awkward and sometimes dangerous rush into engagement from a unacceptable distance.

At younger age levels even the best props were in no way as threatening, and I readily ignored the touch command in preference of getting my arm ready to shoot into my bind.

However, having played two years with more formidable brutes, I would recommend the touch as the best way to tidy up the scrum at all levels and put the props and referee in communication and as such some control.

We abandoned the collapsing of the maul as too difficult to discern when it was the ball carrier who was dragged down, and not a mauling player whose taking out of the game is extremely dangerous (in the initial game where this law was insufficiently explained we lost a player with a severely twisted knee and a possible concussion through chop blocking a non-ball carrier).

I also think that the regulations on "the gate" and the ruck should be cleared up, as the Stellenbosch interpretation just seems stupidly hard to play with.

Basically we have played an interpretation of rucking that heavily discourages going to ground and general messing around in favour of skilled play and clearing of the ball.

If a player unnecessarily goes to ground or the head of a rucker goes below his hips it is deemed dangerous play and penalised by Free kick.

If the defending team can win the ball by stepping over it then they may handle the ball, although this has led to much disruption and plain cheating and has been phased out of this years experimental rules.

I hope these RFU endorsed experimental rules make it into more advanced development and general usage. Further development is necessary, but when I first watched and played rugby it was a game where foul play was disapproved of and technical play did not appear sufficiently rewarded, especially in breakdowns.

I hope, in the aim of making rugby more telegenic and exiting, the IRB actually helps make my game safer and more fun to play.

Thanks and regards, Paul Hunt, Downing College, Cambridge University

'I DISAGREE'

Having been a prop for the last 17 years, I have declared war on the attempts to change – in any way – the scrumming laws. The job of a prop as I play it is two-fold:

1) To protect your hooker in the scrums
2) To physically impose yourself on your opposite man.

There may be other guidelines such as ‘do as little work as possible but make sure everyone thinks you’re actually everywhere just under a big pile of bodies’, but for the point I'm trying to make, those two will do.

These rules aren’t so much a cornerstone hammered into every prop you will ever meet, but more a series of lessons learnt along a very challenging and hard path that is the career of a prop.

When there is a call for scrums as we know them to be fundamentally altereed, there is effectively a call for the final hurrah of the noble arts of propping, for these can really only be done successfully in the scrum as it is right now.
 
Protecting your hooker is a relatively simple job and has to do with the front row unit itself. Tight binding and maybe a bit of cunning positioning can make a scrum feel very comfortable indeed.

With this comes the ball from the put-in and a very steady scrum where no screams can be heard. Job done, Robert's your mother's brother etc.

Physically imposing yourself on another player is an extremely tough job. For props, there are many techniques one can use to extract satisfying outbursts of anguish from your opposite number.

Loosehead props can, for example, drop their bodies below the tight head and drive up into their ribs. This is illegal technically but if done well you can get away with it.

The tighthead can, in turn, counter this by dropping all his weight onto the back and neck of the loose head and just simply lean. Not wanting to go down to ground is the loosehead's saviour.

Just a small change in positioning puts the scrum back to rights and the pressure of the scrum (over a ton in international games) is straightforward again. This example I have just given is one of the many techniques used.

As a hooker, if you bind closely onto the tighthead you can make mincemeat of the opposition hooker. If you bind closely to the loosehead you can put pressure onto the tighthead.

The list goes on and on…. all the way to kissing your opposite number by surprise just before engagement (not that kind of engagement). I hear this one is particularly strength-sapping.

Now, with this never-ending list of painful techniques, scrummaging has recently become more dangerous.

Back in the 70s we had big lumbering props that made the hard yards and scrummaged, and that’s about it. They wouldn't have the energy to perform too many of these techniques too often. Then with the onset of professionalism and a tendency towards an open, expansive game of rugby, the contact areas and the scrum became less important.

Southern hemisphere sides started to use props that were taller, leaner, multi-skilled around the pitch and fleet-footed to boot. Then England and France started to gain the upper hand in the front row wars and the stereotypical meathead prop was reborn, but this model was less rind and more beef.

The frequency of injuries has got greater at the top level because of the increased size and strength of the modern rugby player since professionalism came in. So it is a concern, of course it is, but everybody who steps in to the rugby arena knows what they are stepping in to.

I have never heard any prop forward say he wouldn't step on to the pitch because he didn't feel safe. It has to be a call for the individual player to make. The crucial thing is that it is properly refereed.

What I do see these days is an increasing number of scrums being taken down deliberately by one prop or another. As any seasoned front row forward would know, there are techniques to con the referee into believing that the other prop took the scrum down. It's almost like taking a dive in football to cheat the ref into a card decision. It happens – this is something that must stop.

The problem as it exists now, in my opinion, is the refereeing of said scrums. Not that I blame the officials directly in any way, or the laws for that matter. The scrum is just too darn hard to officiate.

Even after a whole career in the front row, we props are still learning the trade. The ref can only be on one side at a time, and the touch judge is often too far away to effectively see what is going on in the murky underworld of the scrum. Unless you have referees who played in the front row all their careers it wont be possible to get all the decisions right.

Even if the laws are altered, techniques will swiftly be evolved to keep up the pain in the opposition. We are not stupid in the front row, and adapting referees and law interpretations to our own ends is something we do once a week for eighty minutes.

The glaringly obvious problem with scrum officiating at the moment is, that props don’t often become referees. They are too busy catching up on all the beer and pie action they missed out on whilst all coaches they ever played for were telling them to lose the spare tyres. That is not going to change in a hurry either, most of us have a much better time laughing at some of the current officiating attempts.

There is one part of the equation that seems to be missing from all the official analysis: WE FRONT ROWS LOVE WHAT WE DO. RIGHT NOW.

The collapsing of a scrum, the contact as we drive in, the drain on our strength if we lose, are all acceptable risks to us. If you take the physicality away, you take away a part of the gladiatorial soul of our jobs. If the scrum, engagement, driving, crouching angle et al is eviscerated, coaches will start picking fit lean flankers for uncontested scrums and it will be the end of civilization as we know it.

Bryn Stephens, face-down in the mud at the bottom of a maul, Wales