Payne & Afoa - on Super 15 now!!

[Loki]

2 unfortunate moments but it happens. I've seen enough of him in this brief bit of Super 14 to be very glad we've signed him. 2 quality additions. even though I raised the scrum spectre with regards to Afoa I think he'll be a beast for us.

[Gael]

Bit OTT guys?

Perhaps you're right, yeah. Was just slightly disappointing as he could do no wrong all season. Fair play to him though - he can definitely play eggball.

[Neil F]

Forcing these packs to balance for over 6 seconds with the huge forces involved is a recipe for disaster, then add in that the winner of the "hit" has a huge advantage in the scrum and it's no wonder teams jump the gun and engage early, or collapse if they lose the hit.

Exactly. If you lose the hit, you're going to go backwards in that scrum. Given the importance that the scrum has in the game, the obvious solution is to go down and reset. Because both teams know this, however, there is also an incentive for a team who 'wins' the hit to try to take the scrum down to induce a penalty, leaving the referee unsure of who to punish. For everything else that has been said in this thread, this is the one point that stands up. There has always been scrum shenanigans in the front rows. There has always been dropping the elbow, pulling down and so on; what there hasn't always been is 130 stone pushing forward as quickly as possible into this hit.

In that regard, I can see why the 'pause' command was introduced and I can see why referees are encouraged to vary how long the 'pause' segment lasts. There are two reasons for long 'pause' segments - the first is that, by the laws of the game, every scrum command must be obeyed before the next one can be given; if there hasn't been a 'touch', the referee cannot call 'pause'. The props are to blame for this elongation of the command. The second is to remove the anticipation of the 'pause' command. If referees call the commands in a predictable and linear manner, the 'pause' can be anticipated and the hit goes ahead as if the 'pause' command didn't exist, thus defeating the point of it. By varying the length of the 'pause' command, you should, in theory, remove this anticipation, so that the eight hulking beasts taking part in the scrum aren't perfectly primed. It's like sprinters on the blocks; if the starting pistol was predictable following the 'set' command, it could be anticipated and unfair advantage gained. The same goes for 'pause' and 'engage'.

People need to stop blaming referees for the latter of these two things; the fact that packs still insist on anticipating the 'pause' and the collapsing that results is not the fault of the referee, it is the fault of the pack(s). The fact is that packs don't respect the 'pause' command, or at least, they don't treat it as it was intended to be treated. That is why it is problematic. I think a good analogy here is a yellow light; drivers' treatment of a yellow light and its place in traffic law are two very different things. The same goes for the 'pause' command at a scrum.

A straight feed is another matter and it comes back to what I have said before on this forum about referees not being able to see everything that is going on in a scrum. A referee will never not punish a crooked feed IF HE SEES IT; the trouble is that because he's checking to see that the backrows are bound, that the props aren't driving at illegal angles, that the binds are correct or that no one is pulling anyone else down, he'll probably miss a crooked feed. The reason for this is that it tends to be one of the lesser offences at a scrum. If a referee sees a crooked feed, he'll blow it up. In rugby, a referee should never, ever call a foul for an offence he hasn't seen. This is my major gripe about Clancy, for example - he'll turn his back on a ruck to check the offside line and something will happen in that ruck, probably illegal, that will turn the ball over. Clancy looks back, sees the turnover but not the offence and calls a penalty. This is appalling refereeing; you should never blow because you anticipate something illegal has happened. This is why crooked feeds at scrum-time rarely get blown up. I won't applaud referees for missing the crooked feed but I can understand why they do and I'd prefer it is seldom blown up than it is blown up in anticipation of it happening.

I've said this before - referees are vilified at scrums; this is unfair because there is so much illegality that can occur at the scrum that no referee could hope to see all of it all of the time, even if he knew exactly who was doing what, which he can't. We need to stop blaming the referees and start looking at the front rows and asking for a bit of honesty there. The current expectation is that the referees should do more and should see more; this would demand a super-human effort from referees. We need to demand more from our front-rows; they are the ones who are not engaging in the proper spirit of the game.

This is not to say that I support the current scrum laws, by the way; in their own way, the facilitate the shenanigans that go on in the front row but they are the laws we have at the moment. Referees can only fight against what they can see. The IRB needs to have a serious rethink about any set of rules that facilitate a 130 stone drive forward on anticipation of a command. The hit that results from this destabilises a scrum long before the ball enters; the fact that a scrum is often won or lost before the ball has gone anywhere near it says a lot. I wouldn't want to see an uncontested engage but I can't really see any other way around it.

[bootlaced]

Well quite another well thought out post.

Your first sentence probably sums up most peoples views of the scrum.You can allow the opposite scrum to take the initial drive,step back and on a call tighten and squezzzze together and drive them back off the ball,even AIL standard forwards would know this,and we used to be taught how to counter drive.

My humble solution is this,do whatever you want to form the scrum,including the one in practice at the moment,but basically you want the scrums not to move forward until the scrum half puts the ball into and onto the mark of where the scrum is set[straight],then and only then you can push.The ref should then dictate when the ball can be put in,at his discretion and not the scrumhalfs discretion this is supposed to happen but very rarely does.This would negate the quick feed in and the big "hit"


So a scrum forms, everybody binds,the ref says steady[ie don't push ] and ensures that the front rows are binding correctly,even if he has to check the binding of both sides of the scrum,he then stands with the scrumhalf he blows his whistle and the scrumhalf puts the ball in straight.A simple way to enforce the laws of the game.

[Snipe Watson]

Is that not the law anyway? No pushing until the ball comes in and the ball can only be put in when the scrum is steady?

[bootlaced]

Is that not the law anyway? No pushing until the ball comes in and the ball can only be put in when the scrum is steady?

Aye but what happens at the moment is as soon as the forwards bind they basically engage/push/drive make the hit,I would have them engage and bind and then pause,wait till everything is legal blow the whistle and then allow the scrumhalf to put the ball in.

[Neil F]

Is that not the law anyway? No pushing until the ball comes in and the ball can only be put in when the scrum is steady?

You are correct; these are the rules but it has always seemed like a contradiction to me. The only way a hit has purpose and credence is that it gives the team that wins the hit an advantage in that scrum. It can only really give this advantage by writing-off the laws you mention. If the scrum is stable and no one is pushing, the advantage from winning the hit is removed. My personal feeling is that the hit is the source of all problems in the scrum.

[Snipe Watson]

So really all we need is for the laws of the game to be inforced properly....happy days, that's the scrum sorted.

[Neil F]

Well, the trouble is that any laws that facilitate the hit directly contradict those about not pushing before the ball is in... Seems that even the best scrums now achieve stability because the pre-ball entry pushing reaches an equilibrium for long enough to get the ball into an unmoving target. For as long as the rules allow the type of hit we currently see, the scrum simply cannot be refereed properly. Personally, I don't feel the mixed messages sent to competing front-rows by implicitly contradictory rules is the fault of referees; these rules make it impossible to referee something that it is was always difficult to referee.

[damianmcr]

Payne is now playing in the ITM Cup for Northlands.

[BR]

Payne is now playing in the ITM Cup for Northlands.

80 minutes at fullback; no scores; 19-9 win over Tasman

[damianmcr]

Im more thinking along the lines of when will Ulster get their hands on him. ITM Cup is running up until the end of August.