Have rugby’s referees been told to depower the scrum and make sure scrum dominance doesn’t play a massive part in the Castle Lager Rugby Championship?
That’s the question after a weekend of the tournament where both the All Blacks and Springboks had superior scrum dominance over Los Pumas and the Wallabies, but never got the reward for their efforts.
The Springboks edged out the Wallabies in a nervous fixture, but more than once we saw the Aussie scrum fall and the referee simply saying “play on”.
In a similar vein in Buenos Aires, Argentina’s dominant display was helped by the fact they weren’t penalised a lot for their scrum, which went backwards.
The Springboks have based a massive part of their game on scrum dominance and, as such, have been known to have the strongest scrum in the game.
But despite this, this season they have had little reward. Part of it has been the reshuffling of the pack for every game and the Boks' over-emphasis in Johannesburg on running the ball from everywhere, but in Cape Town, at least, they were never given the benefit of the stronger scrum.
HAVE REFS BEEN TOLD TO LAY OFF SCRUM PENALTIES?
Which begs the question if referees have been told to lay off scrum penalties?
Referees do get judged by the amount of reset scrums and World Rugby has been on a mission to stop scrum resets in the modern game.
There are a few countries with weaker scrums that see the set-piece as a restart and not a part of the gladiatorial nature of the game.
So when just six penalties are awarded over two games with two teams with a very dominant scrum, it really starts to make you wonder.
And there are those - like former Wallaby, England and current Japan coach Eddie Jones - and former Wallaby coach Ewan McKenzie who agree.
Speaking on the Rugby Unity podcast, the two slammed the “growing trend” of not rewarding the dominant scrums.
“There was a scrum where Argentina went backwards, and then they collapsed it, and the referee just said, ‘play the ball,’ “ McKenzie said.
“So the All Blacks drove on their own put-in, drove Argentina backwards, so they’re looking for a penalty, obviously, that’s the norm, that’s how the European referees have officiated it. But no, they drive Argentina backwards; it collapses, it should have been a penalty, and you get nothing.
“There’s no reward for having a dominant scrum; you may as well start putting back rowers in the front row like they did in schoolboy football 20 years ago. That’s what we are getting to because there’s no contest.
“In the other test matches, it was the same thing; the scrum contest is just gone. There’s nothing in it. There was one penalty, that was it. Otherwise, everyone just gets the ball regardless of what goes on up front.”
PRESSURE FOR LESS SCRUMS
Jones pointed to the trend of World Rugby and said there was pressure for less scrums.
“We have been talking about the scrum for a while now, and there seems to be pressure in the game – and these things creep in, it starts as a small thing, and then it becomes a trend to referee like that and that then becomes the norm,” Jones said.
“What we’re seeing becoming the norm at the moment, and again, it’s crept into the game, is taking the contest out of the scrum. I alluded to it way back when Japan played Wales in the second test that the referee was trying to take the contest out of the game because Japan is not supposed to have a stronger scrum.
“So they didn’t want to have that situation where they had to adjudicate in a difficult game for that referee at that time. So you’re seeing that more and more, and they definitely get marked on the number of resets they have, so they don’t want to have resets. They just get the play going again and get the ball away quickly.
“It’s the same with this deliberate knock on. That was never part of the game, until someone said, ‘Oh, we got a referee against that,’ and now it’s become the norm that a player sticks out their hand to try to take an intercept, and they get sin-binned, and it’s a deliberate knock on.
"Very, very few times it’s a deliberate knock on and you can see when it is, but these things become the norm and part of our game, and it detracts from the game.”
BOKS DIDN’T GET REWARD
McKenzie said it was clear in this past weekend’s game that the Boks weren’t being rewarded for their dominance.
“Well, it just detracts from the point of having different bodies, shapes, and sizes,” he said.
“There are guys out there that look like they’re there to scrum and provide some sort of technical expertise in that area, but if the scrum is just allowed to tent peg… In the South Africa game, every time it just collapsed in, so there was no reward. South Africa got a penalty on the second shove, which they normally do in every game.
"They didn’t get on the first scrum because Smith didn’t trap the ball at the back of the scrum, and it fell out. But in the second scrum, they got a penalty. So you go, ‘Oh, okay, maybe South Africa have got scrum dominance’ but every scrum just went down after that and they said play on.
"So you wouldn’t know who the dominant scrum was because the scrum never happened, the ball just went in and out, but there was no contest.”
RUGBY LEAGUE-ESQUE
“It is rugby league-esque, and everyone will lose interest. They will just pick different body shapes up front. The problem is that you’re going to get a European referee, and a French referee is going to give a penalty if you go one foot forward.
"So you’re going to get a penalty for being dominant, that’s what’s going to happen. Suddenly, teams will get caught out because that’s how they referee. They reward the dominant scrum, and that’s why the Springboks have played to it; it’s been a strength of theirs for the last six or seven years
“Every time on their first put in, they’ll do a second shove and try to milk a penalty that they try to exert their dominance. Well, you’re not getting those opportunities anymore.”
It may be too early to call it a trend, but the opening four games of the Rugby Championship -- especially the last two games -- have shown referees unable to reward the dominant pack, which in South Africa’s case at least has led to them struggling to get a dominant platform.
The Boks may have won, but scrum coach Daan Human won’t be happy. And if the trend continues, it will rob the game of one of its key elements.
And take away a part that all the purists love.