Rucking Hell!: Crouch, Touch, Pause...Don't Bother...

The IRB’s proposal to drop the “pause” phase of the scrum engagement command is a step in the right direction towards making scrummaging decent viewing again, and shutting up Phil Kearns (well, a man can dream…)

Referees’ cadence, the specific timing of the “crouch-touch-pause-engage” command, does not come under enough scrutiny in elite-level rugby. It has become farcical with some referees taking long enough between the “pause” and “engage” calls to read War and Peace or, in the case of Steve Walsh, put away a couple of tinnies. The timing of the cadence also varies hugely within a game and between different referees. You even get the sense that some referees deliberately goad the players into engaging early; in this way they simply award a free-kick and side-step the difficult business of actually officiating a scrum.

This displays very little empathy with the players and the game. The reality is that there are two sets of eight very heavy and aggressive men poised to pile into each other; given that there is so much emphasis placed on winning the initial hit in modern rugby, the scrum commands should be as predictable as possible to allow the players, particularly the front row, to prepare and time their engagement. The results of this inconsistency are not only messy scrums, but an eating up of the clock and persistent moaning from Australians about a lack of “expansive footy” (we in the North don’t mind too much, we love a bit of trench warfare).

Dropping the “pause” and speeding up the process, as the IRB has suggested, might be one way to solve this problem, another suggestion could be the inclusion of a countdown (“3, 2, 1, engage”) to introduce more consistency into the cadence. That, or assistant referees could start doing their job and actually call offences in the scrum on a regular basis; dodgy binding is a prominent problem in the scrum and one of the easiest to officiate, and you’re lucky if you see the assistant ref call it more than once in a game.

So much has been made of the size of the modern forwards, their willingness to cheat and the inability of referees to understand the scrum, when rugby already has all the tools it needs to fix scrummaging. Sure, some scrums are going to be impossible to get right (have a look at Pek Cowan and Co. at the Western Force this season nose-diving to the floor faster than a Kamikaze pilot) but a little more sympathy towards the players will go a long way. Hopefully the IRB’s rule change will produce more efficient and effective scrums on the pitch and allow the front row some meaningful competition to justify their more...shapely figures.

the force scrum prepare for divine wind

Rugby as a whole, though, needs to decide whether it wants the scrum to be merely a means of resetting the game or a weapon. The former is what we see more frequently in Super Rugby, where according to Brad Thorn the scrum is a much faster in-and-out, get-on-with-the-game process, and the latter is more commonly seen in the muddy wastes of England and France, with the scrum seen as a meaningful way of breaking down the opposition and milking 3 or 5 pointers. England’s dismantling of Ireland in this year’s Six Nations was a prime example of the offensive power of the scrum.  

The IRB has thrown the fatties a bone with this rule change, but they need to reiterate their commitment to ensuring a meaningful contest at scrum-time. If the set-piece loses its importance, then rugby union will begin to resemble rugby league more and more, and no one wants that, do they? 

G.C.