Scrum laws a mystery even to refs
by Wayne Smith From: The Australian November 21, 2009 12:00AM Increase Text Size Decrease Text Size Print Email Share Add to Digg Add to del.icio.us Add to Facebook Add to Kwoff Add to Myspace Add to Newsvine What are these?
IF nothing else, the public dressing down of Australian referee Stu Dickinson by his IRB boss Paddy O'Brien has laid bare just how much is wrong with rugby.
Let's deal first with the lesser issue of O'Brien's disgraceful humiliation of one of the game's senior international referees. It is almost unheard of for the IRB, through its director of elite referees, to issue a public statement criticising the performance of a Test whistleblower. But O'Brien didn't just professionally critique Dickinson's handling of last weekend's Italy-All Blacks Test. He went way beyond that, savaging it in a way that was deliberately offensive, virtually guaranteed to undermine Dickinson's credibility with the players and, worst of all, almost certainly inaccurate.
According to O'Brien, Dickinson needed to be sent off for "scrum coaching" after getting it wrong in seven of the eight scrums packed in the last 10 minutes of the Milan Test as the Azzurri attempted to bludgeon their way over from the set piece.
"The best example I can use is in the last 10 minutes there were eight scrums of which seven the tighthead for Italy is purely illegal," O'Brien said in his statement. "Up here (in Europe) they're crying that it should have been a penalty try (to Italy). It should have been a penalty first scrum to the All Blacks.
"We've got to be fair to teams. If the referee is not accurate, we've got to put our hand up. We need to educate that referee and get him better because that scrummaging on Saturday was not up to international standard."
Yeah, well neither was O'Brien's statement. Had it been more even-handed, it might also have acknowledged that in one scrum, the All Blacks loosehead stood up as the Italian pack drove forward and rode up on to the Italian tighthead. The All Blacks loosehead's actions were excuse enough for Dickinson to have awarded Italy a penalty try.
We could debate all day exactly what happened but there is first the question of the appropriateness of O'Brien, a New Zealander, making a grovelling pilgrimage to the All Blacks' London hotel.
There he reassured head coach Graham Henry and his staff that they were right in their accusation that Dickinson had been "guessing" in his scrum rulings.
O'Brien might not be aware of this but there is widespread concern among international coaches about the IRB's use of All Blacks' scrum guru Mike Cron to advise referees about the latest shenanigans frontrowers are getting up to in the set piece. It's probably only a perception thing, but the IRB and its referees need to be totally above suspicion. The fact that he himself is a Kiwi should have made O'Brien doubly aware of appearances.
Arguably, O'Brien felt compelled to make an example of Dickinson because just three days before the Milan Test, the IRB's top referees and referee managers had gathered in London to discuss, among other things, the vexed issue of collapsed scrums and resets.
And certainly this is an area worth targeting given that the IRB's own research indicates that there are an average of 18 scrums and as many collapses and resets in every Test, which means that 16 per cent of the game time is consumed by the scrum. On a bad day, it climbs to 25 per cent.
Let's reflect on that for a moment . . . on average, nearly 13 minutes of every Test is devoted to scrummaging, rising to 20 minutes when things really turn ugly.
But wait . . . what else was it that the referees and managers discussed during their think tank? Oh yes, the issue of illegal tackles in open play.
Again, had O'Brien been even-handed, he would have castigated not only Dickinson but also Jonathan Kaplan, the South African referee who handled the Australia-Ireland match in Dublin the following day.
After all, Kaplan made what was clearly the wrong decision in sending Wycliff Palu to the sin bin for a shoulder charge on Irish fullback Rob Kearney when it was obvious he had used his arms in the tackle. But then, a little later, Kaplan studiously ignored half a dozen replays on the big screen at Croke Park that showed Kearney himself shoulder-charging Rocky Elsom in a bid to stop him from scoring in the corner.
So why has O'Brien not paid a visit to the Wallabies at their Edinburgh hotel to beg forgiveness of Robbie Deans and Palu for two mistakes that, unlike any Dickinson made, almost certainly changed the outcome of the match?
Yet what is scariest about all of this has nothing to do with the individuals caught up in it.
Putting aside O'Brien and Dickinson, here we have a situation where the head of the game's international refereeing panel, himself a long-time Test referee, is accusing a referee who has officiated in three World Cups and controlled almost 50 Tests, of guessing in his scrum rulings.
If O'Brien is right, Dickinson made the wrong decision in seven scrums out of eight at the death in Milan. Even if O'Brien is only half-right, that's still an appalling statistic. It actually confirms what the Wallabies for years have believed, that scrum rulings went against them not because they necessarily had been doing anything wrong but because referees felt obliged to do something about repeated collapses and it was an easy out to pin the blame on the supposedly weaker pack.
But it goes even wider and deeper than that. If two of the most experienced referees in the history of the game view the same scrums completely differently, then surely the laws of the game are simply too messy.
Is it any wonder rugby is Australia is losing fans who once would have considered themselves as rusted-on to the code? Too many Tests are decided on penalty kicks and too many penalties are simply arbitrary and, as often as not, could just as easily have been awarded to the other side.
What the starting point might be in solving this problem is itself a matter for debate. Myself, I think it should start with an apology to Dickinson.
Unfortunately, O'Brien, Kevin Rudd is all sorried-out. You might need to handle this apology yourself.
