A little over twelve months ago, Italy hosted New Zealand for an international in Milan. The referee was the experienced Australian, Stuart Dickenson. Italy did very well in the scrums in this match, with the ref frequently penalising the New Zealand pack. Although there were differing views at the time, the consensus seemed to be that the tall NZ loose-head, Wyatt Crockett, was moving to his left after contact in order to establish an angled drive into the chest of his tighthead opponent, Martin Castrogiovanni.
The difficulty for Crockett was two-fold: (i), he is quite tall and therefore could not maintain a strong position under the chest of his much shorter opponent and, (ii), Castrogiovanni is very strong! Castro needed no second invitation and accepted the invitation to drive through the attempted wheel and into the small gap offered between Crockett and his hooker. Crockett was frequently left with no shoulder to push on and collapsed — hence the succession of penalties. The other All Black loose-head, Tony Woodcock, was also partial to this tactic and both players frequently used their left hands on the ground for balance and drive up into the susceptible tight-head. (For some unknown reason, this infringement was hardly ever noted by the ref or his assistants!) Australia’s Bill Young was another who used this tactic with success over a few years.
Castrogiovanni’s success in this match seems to have spawned a new breed of tight-heads who ‘bore in’ on their opposition hookers. The only conclusion I can come to is this: the (good) tight-heads seem to have concluded, “If the refs are going to be looking at the loose-heads, no need to wait for the loose-head who wants to angle in — I can bore in on the hooker anyway!” Apart from Castro, Adam Jones (Wales), Cole (England), Mas (France) and Owen Franks (NZ) are all tight-heads who angle in to the left.
Almost invariably, the refs are penalising the loose-head, even though the poor guy is left with no opposition shoulder to pack on. This should be very easy for the ref to spot. The tight-head’s opponent is on his right and his angle should therefore be slightly to his right. The ‘boring-in’ tight-head is clearly angled well to his left. The general belief in the game is that Paddy O’Brien takes a lot of scrum info from Hansen and Cron. They are acknowledged experts after all — and mates! We would all like to know why this illegal tactic is not penalised!
The All Blacks certainly seem to have picked up on Castro’s tactic. This season, they have changed totally from a loose-head initiative, via Tony Woodcock, to a tight-head initiative, via Owen Franks. I concede that only the good ones can do this effectively, when playing against a good loose-head. Benn Robinson’s appearance from the bench in the Italy game, a few weeks back, made Castro’s job much more difficult. Robinson is short and very strong in the legs, and can really get in under his opponent’s exposed rib-cage. Owen Franks has been fantastic is his application of this (illegal) tactic and Robinson has found him a more difficult opponent.
To add insult to injury for the aggrieved team, many teams use the added illegality of the tight-head flanker sliding up into the front-row to make life all-but-impossible for the loose-head. This also is very easy for the on-field officials to detect.
So Paddy, this is what we want. It is actually a collection of thoughts from a number of sources, and you can run them past your mates, if you like, but please let us all in on the outcome. You might even like Brian Moore’s suggestion of a panel of front-row players from the ‘old days’ — that is, when we had to play in accordance with the laws.
A. Insist on the laws as they are written:
- Ball in straight and along the line of the shoulders.
- No pushing before the ball comes in.
- Props lined up opposite the ‘hole’ that they must pack into.
- Props pushing straight.
- Only three players in each front-row, for the duration of the scrum.
B. Give away the ridiculously slow call sequence, which serves only to unbalance the packs. (Could you explain why we have a pause before the command “Pause!”?) We need only an ordered sequence of actions, not a contest between referee and players.
Can you get to it as soon as possible, please? I watched this weekend’s Heineken Cup match between Northampton and Cardiff and the scrums were your worst nightmare. Most scrums resulted in either free-kicks (‘early engagement’, of course) or penalties, with the maximum number of collapses imaginable. Another great game ruined by the scrum and poor refereeing!
