So How Do You Fix This Mess Called The Scrum?

Nick Cain talks to scrum guru Phil Keith-Roach about the problems with the game's greatest set-piece

- Nick Cain

The scrum has collapsed. That is not just a statement on the endless time-wasting and confusion among players and referees that brings half the scrums in the modern game to their knees – it is a statement about the survival of the scrum as a sacrosanct part of Rugby Union.

The scrum in its current form is being slammed from all sides – and it deserves to be. The main reason is that watching front row forwards and their pack colleagues take a knee, have a rest and a drink – as well as a chat with a water-carrier coach – is as boring as watching paint dry.

When, eventually, they are coaxed into forming a scrum by the referee, the purgatory for fans continues when it collapses in a heap and has to be reset.

This can happen three or four times more before the referee spots a front row technical infringement and awards either a penalty or a free-kick.

The upshot is that the scrum is incomplete, and often adds nothing to the contest, and yet players rush in from all corners of the pitch, to back-slap a prop or hooker lucky enough to win the penalty lottery.

By that time, four or five minutes of the match have been wasted. There have been suggestions that a way of handling these Mogadon minutes is to stop the clock, but that is not a viable solution unless you are interested in matches that last for 180 minutes, rather than 80, because it does not discourage the dawdling.

The Rugby Paper’s postbag, as well as comment forums on rugby social media, is overflowing with complaints from supporters who are deeply disillusioned with the degrading of the scrum, especially the recent law change that allows crooked or ‘favourable’ put-ins, when the scrum-half is able to sidestep towards his own hooker.