Return of the ruck will save our game

It is 16 long years since the large England lock Danny Grewcock planted one of his size umpteens on the head of Dwayne Peel while the Wales scrum-half was still standing upright – a feat of loose-limbed athleticism so impressive, it made Bruce Lee look arthritic by comparison.

- CHRIS HEWETT

Grewcock’s reward for stretching the boundaries of human elasticity at a “ruck” was a yellow card and endless days of holier-than-thou condemnation from the Cardiff faithful, who not only found themselves celebrating an important Six Nations victory but also able to indulge in their favourite hobby of feigning outrage over the crimes and misdemeanours of a white-shirted pantomime villain in the grand tradition of Wade Dooley and Martin Johnson.

For the rest of us, the incident served as a reminder of one of modern rugby’s fundamental truths: that boots on bodies – any part of the body, let alone the really important bit situated on the shoulders – were as Old Testament as “an eye for an eye” and had no place in a mass-consumption spectator sport. The ruck was dead and buried, never to be resurrected.

To be strictly accurate, the crime scene was barely a “ruck” at all: not in the sense that rugby lovers of a certain age had known and cherished it. Rather, it was a prototype of the “goalline siege pile-up” that now scars the game on a weekly basis.

But we must leave the fine detail for another day. The question here is whether the real ruck – players on their feet, correctly bound, driving past the ball – is enjoying a Lazarus moment.