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Why has rugby become scrumby?

Roar Guru
5th August, 2011
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Roar Guru
5th August, 2011
31
1360 Reads

I’m confused. I have been playing and supporting rugby since my parents took me down to Biggs Field in Sunnybank 35 years ago. There we tried to run, step, tackle, catch, kick and pass.

No one had to tell us the object of the game – it was obviously to score tries.

I know we needed to start the game somehow – that was a kickoff. I also know we had to get the game going again after the ball went out – lineouts. And if you knocked the ball forward you need another way to restart the game – scrums.

These three elements of the game, and a few more besides, are all essential parts of rugby. But they exist to serve the major purpose of the game by restarting play with a contest. And “play” is about attempting to score tries. That was the natural order of things, and that’s what we loved about the game.

Somewhere along the way (I feel it’s been since 2003, but I don’t really know) I’ve noticed a pronounced shift in the emphasis placed on the scrum contest, as determining who is a good team and who is not in the eyes of many – mainly from the northern hemisphere and South Africa, but more and more from New Zealand as well.

There is hysterical talk of the importance of scrum time, the fascinating battle, the injustices of referees decisions, and, most disturbingly, the need (the righteousness!) for the dominant scrum to be rewarded.

I must have missed something, but for what should a dominant scrum be rewarded? For being good at restarting play? Why should that be rewarded with points or field position? Especially if they were the nitwits who knocked it on or infringed in the first place.

A team who can barely throw or catch the ball, but have a great goal kicker and good scrum, shouldn’t be able to win a game off the back of goals kicked via a constant stream of refereeing decisions, concerning that one aspect of the game – especially when it is clear to every player and fan that the referees are guessing which way to blow the penalty, 90 per cent of the time and are highly susceptible to being conned by both teams.

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What sort of game has it become when the flawed judgments of an official regarding one part of play constantly decides big games?

We deride soccer for the dives in the penalty area that earn spot kicks and decide the biggest games, yet we allow the referee much more freedom to win a game for a team with our current scrum interpretations. And they do.

We have lost sight of what rugby is supposed to be about by tolerating this crazy notion that the scrum is the object of the game, rather than merely a part of it.

There is so much exciting rugby being played by the top teams at the moment, but this obsession with scrums will see rubbish teams with limited tactics be rewarded yet again in this World Cup by going much further than they deserve, or even winning it.

And that’s not the game I thought I loved.

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