Collapsing a scrum would be up there with the most important thing to fix if I was in Paddy’s position. The safety aspect is a priority but it is also killing the spectacle and the competition for the ball.

All speed and no brains is not a solution to our ref’ing issues. Kaplan tonight – a chance for the prancing pony to shine at Australia’s expense.

I do think we over react to ref’s sometimes and I can understand why international ref’s would hate us. We do have some form.

I seem to remember when I was playing (and knew little of the rules) collapsing the scrum was a big deal and penalties would be handed out.

That Samoa game was soooo! obvious even an old retired ref like me would have got it. The ref’s name was Fitzgibbon a young Irishman, maybe he will get better, but at international level I expect more than this.

If what you and Jerry say about collapsing scrums is correct, I dont believe for one moment that it is true, then all that would happen is that the collapsed scrum would still go on just without the hit.

All we would end up with is another step on the road to tiddlywinks.

You are also on the band wagon of the refs understanding who was at fault. I claim this is impossible to police and is best left alone.

You misunderstand what I have meant. The short arm goes to the attacking team therefore there is no advantage in your opposition half. If you are attacking in your opposition half then they will do everything to hold the scrum up and it will be obvious that you are trying to collapse the scrum.

Did either of you see the Samoa v Wales match? There was some of the worst referring decisions I have ever seen. Wales twice bored into the Samoa scrum and then collapsed it 5m from the Welsh line with the Welsh fighting to stay in the game. Scrum reset both times and no penalty. There were blatant offsides by Wales and no turnovers given to Samoa when they were on their feet over the Welsh player on the ground.
With this level of refereeing incompetence, why attempt to give ref’s the impossible task of deciding who is guilty in a pub fight?

Even at a local level it is mostly allowed to go in crooked. I kept my end of the bargain up as an old ref, but in the end the players just didn’t get it and I would get questions from captains or half backs saying something like “Ref everyone else we have allows the ball in like this, what is your problem” Still I hung in there until the curtain came down. Now I coach and that has great interest.

The scrum collapses are not simple and contrary to what Jerry says above, I think this is fixable at the front row level if the rules allow it to be so. Training young props not to collapse takes some getting out of but it can be done. The bridge analogy that Jerry uses above is a good one. if the two front rows come together under pressure then assuming they have their heads above horizontal (law) the natural thing is for the scrum to be stable unless it gets spun or a prop bores in. The default state for a scrum is to stay up not collapse you have to make it collapse.

Short arm them and fix the issue once and for all.

That is why I am proposing the short arm solution everyone knows what its for and refs dont have to decide what is going on in the secret society that is the front row!

You cant ask young props to answer this because most of them have been trained to drop at the first sign of trouble.

The other issue is that if you are so dominate that the opposition wants ‘out’ it will be pretty obvious that they are trying to pull it down.

How wrong can you get it as a ref body than to allow this stuff to go on and assume the coaches will not use it? The coaches spend their entire working lives looking for an edge or advantage.

Putting the ball into the scrum crooked is a travesty that is killing the hooking skill in union and has already killed it in league.

The hit has always been important. I think it was more so in my day of the 70′s early 80′s where you wanted total domination at scrum time. The idea was to destroy the opp. front row so that they didnt want to scrum against you.

I’ve run touch for a number of Subbies games this year. Policing the offside is pretty easy. Even spotting illegal bindings on the opposite side of the scrum to the ref is fairly easy. And I’m short sighted!

The difference at that level is that there is automatically assumed prejudice/bias in the touch judging, because each team provides one. The laws are reasonably well enforced (meaning, don’t pull stuff up that makes you look like a pedantic little tw at) because of the advantage it can give your team. But things even out or you try to not look too biased because of the potential wrath of opposing supporters .

If you watch any game from Super 14 up, there is ahrdly ever a ruck where players on the attacking side stay on their feet.

The players have a responsibility as do the coaches and there are penalties both on and off the field if you get it wrong. There appears to be almost no penalties to ref’s who get it wrong, at worse case a demotion for a week. Teh only ref they have jumped on is the midget with the squeaky voice after the NZ media went ballistic and I dont think he got it all that wrong he was just implementing the rules as they are in the book with a couple of exceptions.

Just goes to show how political the ref’s are and how far away from the game they are getting.

The scrum collapses are a coach developed thing ie if you think you have lost the hit or scrum ‘just collapse it’ is how it was put to me by a coach. Now as an old ref and even older player I find this dangerous and gutless thus my simple idea to short arm them. I bet you collapsed scrums would not last a season if this was the case and we have had to put up with this rubbish for years.

The refs should just implement the laws in the book and not go farting around with interpretations that were never meant to be in there or IRB bloody stupid rulings from camel designing commitees.

Can’t see the issue.

The refs seem to be struggling with fast impacts &; low body positions at the breakdown, someone in another thread spoke of some English PL (I think it was) where the teams were pinged if they went off their feet, hance they came in higher & stayed up.

The scrum is a bit of a nightmare for the refs as you’ve got to ensure the distance is correct, then watch the put in, while watching for the props rolling their shoulders down, dropping their arms or refusing to bind, biding on the arm instead of the body, changing their angle (boring), or doing a push/pull to get the wheel. Oh yeah, don’t forget sometimes scrums just go down even when both teams are technically correct.

That tackle by Hynes on Monye last week was a bloody disgrace to get more than a ‘watch yourself’ from the ref made it all seem so futile. Maybe the IRB want international rugby to be able to be played by the players mums.

Instead of cracking down on scrum (they dont know what is going on anyway) and tackles, I reckon a bit of watching offside wouldn’t go astray. I wonder what goes through these guys heads most times.