Packing down to times past: why putting scrums under scrutiny is cause for concern
Newcastle Herald
Wednesday March 30, 2011
ALL organisations evolve over time in order to meet their identified needs.Rugby league is no different. The wheels of progress might turn fairly slowly, but they do turn.However, if there is no corporate memory, there is a very real danger that there will eventually be a cyclic repetition of the errors that were made years ago. Some hotshot will waltz in and start making changes so that everybody will notice him, not realising that he's actually going over old ground.By the late 1970s, rugby league in Sydney was in a lot of trouble. People were leaving the game in droves because of the perceived unfairness of the results of games. Matches, in many instances, weren't being won on their merits.The course of games was being turned on scrum penalties. One grand final in the mid-70s was won by goals kicked from scrum penalties. There was a distinct odour about it. It had got to the stage where the referees, on a whim, could select any one of a host of penalties available to them at the scrum. The list was mind numbing.The upshot of it all was that scrums, as a contest for possession, degenerated to the point where we weren't getting scrum results - only scrum penalties, and what a lottery it was which penalty it would be and which team would get it.Well, as the saying goes, "You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time," but when fans were going home kicking stones or - what was more disturbing to the head honchos - not going at all, it was obvious the scrum penalty had to go.Faced with the problem of fans so soured by games turning on the whim of a referee, not on the skill and merits of the players, the scrum as a contest was headed for extinction.For more than 20 years it has been merely a method for reintroducing the ball into play, a fact which irritates old forwards and amuses rugby purists but has eliminated the refs from the equation.This is where corporate memory is important. So I rang Bill Harrigan to find out what he was trying to achieve with scrums and asked him whether he was aware of the pitfalls of a cyclic return to the ubiquitous scrum penalty.He admitted to being a teenager in the 70s but said he aware of the evolutionary path scrums had taken as a result of that regrettable era. He doesn't want a raft of scrum penalties but he said there were three main objectives.Firstly, scrums have to look like traditional scrums with players binding correctly arms around the body and packing in properly, not standing there unbound with their heads up out of the scrum.The second requirement is that no one is to break from the scrum until the referee calls "out" - which means the ball has come back behind the second-rowers' feet. The aim here is to give the backs a chance for some attacking play without back-rowers exploding out of the scrum prematurely to smother the halves.The third instruction is to the half feeding the scrum: he has to stand square at the tunnel and feed the ball with two hands. Not in the middle of course, but he can't just thread it around one of the prop's legs.It has to go behind the nearside prop's legs and come out behind the second-rowers', and yes - the lock can break and pick up the ball because it is deemed to be out when it is behind the second-rowers' feet.Harrigan is upbeat and confident the outcome will be beneficial to the game. Frankly, I'm nervous about the potential for the refs to find more penalties. Their rugby counterparts are in Olympic class at it, and it does nothing for a game's continuity or appeal.On the premiership front, it was great to see the Cowboys put in an 80-minute display on Monday night.It was a brand of hard running and tough defence that allowed Johnathan Thurston and Matt Bowen to unfurl their considerable skills.The Cowboys have promised much and delivered very little in recent times while their coach, Neil Henry, stoically took the brunt of it on the chin.Whatever they did between the loss to Newcastle and the impressive victory over the Storm should be worth repeating for their next game at Parramatta. Consistency will be their challenge.The unbeaten Bulldogs are still developing their game.A couple of observations about them are that they have assembled a pack of forwards good enough to give them a crack at the title, and a new pair of halves in Trent Hodkinson and Kris Keating who played well enough to put the cleaners through NSW hopefuls Mitchell Pearce and Todd Carney.A final thought for this week is that the Sharks will be well clear of the wooden spoon by September.There is a purpose about their work in attack and a grim determination about their defence.It should see them safely away from the dreaded ladle a long way out from the finish line.'The scrum has been merely a method for reintroducing the ball into play, which irritates old forwards and amuses rugby purists.'
© 2011 Newcastle Herald