The scrum has fallen

Bit of a different view today I'm focusing upon a sport I have not focused on before in this blog, that being Rugby. I will not for one minute pretend to be an expert in the sport one little bit, I like to watch and can teach it at school. I have limited playing and coaching experience but I feel this has little affect on what I observed yesterday.

While watching the England Ireland game yesterday which turned out to be a magnificent win for the away team I spotted something I had seen often in international rugby in recent years. The scrum has become a skill or component of the game that is an absolute mess at the top end of the game. Yesterday twenty two scrums were attempted and if the referee were to apply the rules 100% correctly including full binding and not allowing a scrum to continue because you expect the ball to be out of there very soon, then only 3 of the scrums were legal. All of the others had something wrong with it including front rows not binding correctly, number 8 and flankers disengaging to quickly and turning of the scrum.

I'm not meaning to slate the England and Ireland packs for not being able to scrum affectively in fact part of the blame can be put on the ground as the turf just slipped from under the packs feet. However this is an observation I have made across many international games. The referee can rarely get the two teams to scrum correctly first time and second time the referee normally allows the scrum to take place even if a foul is occurring. The scrum is an extremely difficult skill 16 people all working together and against each other, therefore how are we meant to teach it to younger rugby players if there is no good model or example at the top level which they can watch.

This made me think if the scrum is becoming a bit of a laughing stock and instead of being able to restart the game following a foul we are taking more time out of the game trying to perform a skill which is rarely performed correctly, is it needed. Free kicks could be given instead of scrums to speed the game up, reduce the number of people in the scrums or referees be more tighter to encourage correct scrimmaging technique. I will not pretend to have the answer but I would suggest it is an area of the game which needs focusing on.