Former Manu Samoa No 10 and freelance rugby scribe Campbell Burnes wonders aloud about the future of scrums and big-time scrummagers.
They are a vital source of ball, but if there are less of them than ever, how seriously do we have to take scrums?
Scrums.
Just the very mention of the word is enough to send daisy-pickers (that is, backs) or part-time rugby fans to sleep. All that shoving, grunting, sledging and endless resetting.
But my mates who played in the front-row will swear until they are blue in the face that scrums are an integral part of the game. Good scrummaging is one of the dark arts, if you will.
A prop is, in fact, the only position on the field that you can be sent off (sinbinned) for not being good enough. Case in point: Wallabies tighthead Al Baxter against England circa 2005. Andy Sheridan made his life a misery and Baxter could not hold his side up. Off you go, son.
There is a huge amount of analysis, technique and cheating involved in setting up a dominant scrum and that is even before you factor in the variable – the referee.
A week before I wrote this, a World Rugby media release dropped into my inbox. This would normally be the signal for a quick skim of the main points before hitting ‘delete’. But this time one line, in a missive highlighting how injury-prevention is a priority for the game, caught my eye.
‘There is now an average of just seven scrums per game, compared to an average of 32 in 1987.’
This just about blew me away, like a roaring Wellington southerly. An average of just sevens scrums. I knew they had come down, though isn’t it fascinating that there used to be so many in a game. Maybe that’s why Auckland were so good that year. They had more opportunities to drill sides into the ground at the scrum.
In the interests of research, I counted the scrums in March’s Bulls-Chiefs game in Pretoria. Bad example. There were endless resets. I counted at least 13, not including resets.
It stands to reason that the lower level you go in rugby, there will be more scrums, as more players are likely to knock the ball on. I have no data on that, but fair assumption?
What it tells me is that the days of the scrum specialist, who make the odd tackles and lift in a few lineouts, are numbered. Dan Cole’s career is coming to an end, anyway. Now those wearing Nos 3 or 1 need to offer plenty around the park, carry hard, tackle like demons and shift bodies, as well as fulfilling their core task at set-piece.
Mark Allen did most of the other stuff in the mid-to late 1990s, but was hardly a powerful scrummaging loosehead. Good allround rugby player, though. Ofa Tuungafasi is yet to fully mature as a robust, consistent scrummager, but few doubt his work around the track.
If there are only five scrums in a game, and that set-piece is the cornerstone of your game plan or your props’ arsenal, then you will be exposed elsewhere.
The late, great John Drake would hate to see the scrum marginalised. He was good enough to deliberately (and safely) collapse the scrum if he wasn’t happy with the shove.
But we are now seeing less of it. The days of endless scrums are long gone.
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