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In my last scrum basics article I talked about body position and grips. Today I’ll go into the hit and talk about some of the shenanigans that go on during scrums.
The hit has had some bad press over recent years; I think it is often inaccurately blamed for collapses.
I’m happy to chat about collapses if people want, for now I’d prefer to focus on why and how to hit.
On the referee’s call the packs come together and have to hold, with no pushing off the mark until the ball is fed. This is a pivotal moment in any scrum.
All that body position I talked about the other week needs to be applied here as once the ball is fed and full weight comes on your entire eight needs to be in good position and applying a max effort push.
The hit is your chance to get your scrum in position and disrupt your opponent. You want to ensure your pack stays tight with your back five aligned to push through the front three.
A well executed hit will see your pack have zero foot movement, this gives your scrum the best chance of all being aligned, if one person moves his feet the others need to adjust, the whole thing loosens, players become unaligned and power is lost.
So in a good hit you will achieve a strong driving position with back flat, thighs perpendicular to the ground, shins parallel, up on the balls of the feet, shoulders back, bum up, head up and tight with your mates. I repeat all this with zero foot movement.
Depending how far you are from your opponent before the hit, there is a real opportunity to get yourself in a good position while holding and preventing him getting into one.
If the opposing front rows eased into each other and both got in good position then stood up, they should both be happy with where their feet are pre-engagement.
If you are winning the hit, then it is in your favour to be a little closer so that you can get in a good position while holding your opponent out of good position. He can adjust by moving his feet but as mentioned above that has a flow on effect for his whole pack.
Dominance at the hit will also give you a chance to jolt your opponent’s grips loose and disrupting them gives you advantage. Even more importantly the momentum of the hit lets you start to win the wrestle in the front row.
So how do you win the hit? The tighthead needs to lead the engagement. The aim is to be hitting your opponent as the referee says the first ‘e’ in engage. Scrum engagements are definitely an area of the game it is important to get your retaliation in first.
The normal scenario is that a taller prop will want to be further away before the engagement; this lets him build momentum and gives him time and space to get a long frame low.
Shorter props are already lower and need less distance to move from a crouch to a good engaged position, so shorter guys generally like to set closer.
Distance pre-engagement is about trying to get your opponent to pack with his thighs at outside or inside the perpendicular, achieve that and you have impacted his ability to push.
As you engage the fun starts. Both props are using the momentum of the hit to try and pin their opponents chin to his chest. If that happens then his back will bow and he can no longer channel his pack’s weight forward.
The hips are crucial in keeping a straight back, the pelvis cannot be forward, indeed the pelvis must be cocked back during the set – basically stick your bum out.
Couple this with the chest up and open with shoulders back and head up – the lumbar area will now be the lowest point on your back – this is a strong position to transfer weight. If a prop cannot hold this position then he will not be effective.
If you cannot get your opponents chin on his chest (and to be fair, you are pretty dominant if you do that regularly) then you look at your next areas of advantage.
In the simplest terms possible tightheads are locked in tightly and looseheads try to gain advantage by getting under or around them to apply pressure. Looseheads are trying to bow their opponents spine in a vertical or horizontal plane. Looseheads pop a hand on the ground to help them get lower so they can get under a tighthead and then drive in an upward vector on them.
Looseheads also have a freedom of movement that makes it easier for them to angle their drive in, the aim here is to bow the tighthead horizontally and take away his ability to transfer power.
Tightheads, since they bind over the loosehead gain advantage by driving in a downward vector – they want to prevent the loosehead getting under them and force their opponent to help hold them up.
They gain their strongest advantage over looseheads through torsion, if they can twist their opponent by lowering the looseheads left shoulder then that is a major gain.
If a loosehead is boring in and the referee is not calling it then the main counter from a tighthead is to move his entire pack two steps to his right – these are small steps – total movement will be less than a foot and that will bring the opposing loosehead square again. This move is also likely to pull their tighthead and hooker out of line. This takes practice as an eight but is the simplest counter to boring I ever learnt.
A strong tighthead can also gain advantage from boring, Martin Castrogiovanni is one of the world’s best at this. The tighthead can angle his drive in to disrupt the hooker.
If you watch the Australia v Italy game from last year you will see that in the first half Castrogiovanni was not controlled by the referee, he bored in and Slipper tried to follow and was penalised for losing his bind. In the second half the referee started making him stay square and the scrums evened up.
Having not played a lot of loosehead I am actually unsure what the counter is to this if the referee doesn’t control it. Maybe a co-ordinated move to the left?
There is a lot more to it, looseheads can work with hookers to attack a tighthead, the tighthead can work to disrupt the loosehead/hooker bind and isolate the loosie from the rest of the scrum.
Left and right shoulder drives can be elected to influence wheels, fades can be employed to pull your opponent out of position, the list goes on.
Hopefully this provides a taste for those of you who want to know more about scrummaging – any questions?
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