Six Nations

Nope, 'fraid not - but it’s no great secret - it wouldn’t be news to any ref, so they must have some reasons of their own for not pushing through with it…

The big problem though is any side weak at scrummaging then get the chance to take the scrum out of the game.

In games with a tmo, there should be an overhead camera to check on illegal boring in and in all games one touch judge should check and penalise binding etc on the opposite side to the ref.

Finally a crooked feed should be a penalty, it’s cheating.

Its not perfect but at the moment the ref is only watching one side of the scrum.

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No prop would agree to be selected on the grounds that he was meant to take a yellow card at the first scrum. Props are a special kind of competitive.

But it would be easy to say that any team that loses a prop is docked five points (per card) in their next match.

Boring in should be allowed. Binding should be a free-for-all. None of it is a problem if the props have decided they’re not going to ground.

The problem with crooked feeds is that feeding straight (in the current game) is a disadvantage - so all scrum-halves are testing to see what angle of feeding the ref will allow. This, like the issue of going to ground, needs a black-and-white way to call the foul. The simplest thing would be to say that the ball has to touch the hooker’s striking foot, or the put-in is reversed.

@aran it’s a disadvantage to have a straight feed because the scrums are turned into mauls and driven forward, so if a hooker actually hooks, he is on one leg and more easily driven. So, shove it towards our props and walk the scrum forward over it! We know that, we can all see it. Turning the scrum is an offence, but marching it forward isn’t. So, what can be done to make hookers hook?

Well at club level maybe. At top level it’s win at all costs.

What we need is a fair contest. No pushing till the ball comes in. Ball put in straight. Ball has to be hooked. Look at japan v s africa…quick clean ball down the first channel…it’s become a way of winning penalties…i’m sure we agree it should be a quick competitive way of restarting the game. :slight_smile:

I do know that when I was watching for real, in person, actually in the crowd, ‘not straight’ was given fairly often, and the scrum half was muttered at for making such a mistake!

No, seriously. The further up you go, the more certifiable they become… :slight_smile:

You can’t have no pushing until the ball comes in - the front rows can’t engage without starting to push - you’re leaning against your opposite number - if you don’t push at all, you collapse. The key issue there is stability more than zero pushing. There aren’t any refs who consistently enforce stable scrums before put-in.

The difference here is marginal - if the hooker is bound tightly enough and the props have got their hips set well, it’s not a problem unless the props are seriously over-powered, in which case they’re in a world of trouble whatever they do. If the put in is given to the opposite team every time the hooker doesn’t strike the ball, they’ll strike.

The explanation given on TV for how scrums are now is always that the hooker hooking actually makes it harder for his side to win the scrum! It’s all brawn and forward movement, but it has to be straight. If the hooker hooks, that makes a stable forward movement harder this is at International level,

I guess though we’d all like to see scrum problems sorted. :slight_smile:

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I’ve grown increasingly fond of Brian Moore since he retired… :slight_smile:

The fat ones can be props, the tall ones second rows and the diminutive malevolent ones hookers.

:slight_smile:

The problem he talks about with the early drive there isn’t about pushing or not - it’s about whether the contact with the opposition leads to movement. Often, sides get penalised for early driving when the other team takes a deliberate half-step back - which makes it a minefield for refs. Which is why I agree with BM that the answer here is simply to wait until the scrum is steady before allowing the ball to be put in.

Yes, this became a popular comment a while back - but it’s always been the case that you’d face an opposition drive at the moment you were striking for the ball. It’s a fraction of a second - the hooker’s right foot is back in position for a drive the instant he’s struck. Only a weak scrum, or props that have been forced out of position, would lead to trouble there - and they’d lead to trouble anyway.

If refs insisted that the ball must have been struck by the hooker, you wouldn’t see a sudden storm of teams being pushed off their own ball - but you would see them losing the occasional ball to a counter-strike, which used to be one of the lovelier parts of the game.

I didn’t see much of that game, but I can’t remember the last time I saw channel 1 ball in an international. Are you sure it wasn’t just fast channel 3?

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