Rugby world-wide is on a high. Huge stadiums are full for international matches and, indeed, for major club and provincial matches. Television audiences – and income from TV rights – are massive and rising. The quality of the play and the entertainment value is consistently right out of the top drawer. The game continues to grow all around the world – the IRB last month accepted its 118th national union, Iran, after they satisfied the comprehensive Membership Criteria programme. Most of us would be extremely hard pressed to name 118 nations of the world!
The IRB can take a bow, especially after their most recent significant intervention where they insisted that the referees adhere to the laws of the game ‘at the tackle’. What a strange thing, the ruling body having to intervene and remind the custodians of the laws, that the laws are there to be observed. This, after about two years of flagrant disregard for these laws – by both players and referees alike – and a similar period of earnest protest by passionate fans and commentators. Better late than never, I guess. They’re busy, those IRB guys. They must have been too busy to properly adjudicate on those refereeing performances, because the same negligent refs were continually appointed subsequently, match after match.
That problem seems to have been fixed and we all hope that it’s a lasting fix. We can all now turn our attention to another problem of massive concern – the scrum! The problem is the same – consistent and growing disregard for the laws by both players and referees. It seems that a significant number of people, on the playing side of the game, think that it’s OK to deliberately play outside the laws. “It’s only a breach if you are penalised”, they say. I, and many others, don’t agree at all. It’s immoral, it’s cheating, and it serves to lessen our game on the pitch and to detract from the life lessons which players and spectators are told that they will learn from rugby. For goodness sake, IRB, learn the lesson of your success from your belated intervention regarding the ‘tackle law’, and demand that your referees do their jobs properly – or replace them!
A frequent contributor to Dwyer’s View, an old Kiwi prop (his description, not mine), Joe Carberry, commented many months ago on my assertion that All Black loose-head, Tony Woodcock, had his left hand on the ground in most scrums, totally contrary to law and totally ignored by the referees. “Thank goodness you raised this,” he wrote. “I thought that they had changed the laws and that I was behind the times.” How sad that our even our most ardent and knowledgeable fans are confused by the negligence of those charged with the proper adjudication of our game. He contributed further after last weekend’s France versus Australia match. “Who would you think actually collapsed the scrum that France were awarded the penalty try for? Imagine a World Cup final being decided in extra time on a referee’s subjective opinion as to who collapsed a scrum.” This is the fear of many!
Top-level matches now consistently feature what seems like a never-ending sequence of collapsed scrums, with the ref taking pot-luck on the cause. An excellent recent article in The Telegraph, from ex-England hooker Brian Moore, addressed the problem under the heading “Rugby Union referees have a lot to answer for as scrums develop into farce.” Moore lamented the loss of the art of scrummaging, saying that the scrum has become “just pushing and poor refereeing”. He observed that “more than ever the lottery of sanctions for offences, influences games materially; scrums are less stable and less safe”, thereby exacerbating one of the very problems that the IRB seeks to remove.
“Their (the referees’) unilateral, unexplained and unapologetic decision to allow the ball to be put in squint …. have created an unholy trinity of evils from which the present dangerous, boring farce ensues. The IRB will no doubt point to its extensive research into scrums, but it is all otiose (‘functionless’, for those without a dictionary) if the laws are not refereed as meant and as is perfectly possible.” Moore’s article lists the laws of the game for the scrum, supporting his claim that they are completely clear. His view is that if the binding is legal, if neither team is allowed to push early (a very simple observation) or at the angle, and the ball is fed along the line of the join of the props’ shoulders, then we can have fair, competitive scrums that remain aloft — and he makes a compelling, informed case.
Andrew Blades, the acknowledged scrum doctor from Australia’s winning 1999 RWC team, has made the following suggestions. “I believe there are a couple of major problems that could easily be fixed. The engagement sequence seems to be being used by refs to try to trick the players into making mistakes and then penalising them. The timing is far too slow and the variation in the timing, especially between pause and engage, is causing a lot of false starts. Just check that both sides are ready, and then do a quick “crouch, touch, pause, engage” with consistent timing. Referees also need to be harder on props with a hand on the ground, backrowers not staying attached to the scrum in their correct position and halfback interference and contact with opposition players whilst the ball is in the scrum. If the refs are consistent, it will stop players thinking that they can ‘get away with it’ a large percentage of the time.”
My observations and discussions with learned, older props — who played when the laws were enforced — have suggested some possible darker happenings in the corridors of power. The relationship between IRB referee, Paddy O’Brien, and All Black coaching staff members, assistant coach Steve Hansen and scrum guru Mike Cron, is of concern to a number of international teams. Both are universally acknowledged as good men and experts in their field, but an undoubted conflict of interest is the source of their concern.
More on the subject next week.
