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Are our Wallabies all bent out of scrummaging shape?

Roar Rookie
7th January, 2015
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James Slipper's future children will all be named Bernard. (AAP Image/NZN IMAGE, SNPA, John Cowpland)
Roar Rookie
7th January, 2015
114
1911 Reads

The problem is not that we have a problem. The problem is that we have had the problem for so long.

My group of rugby mates shared our thoughts after the 2003 World Cup, after the 2007 World Cup, after the 2011 World cup and after the 2014 Spring Tour. I wrote (and write) as an old grey nomad who has long been out of the loop and seen little enough rugby in recent times.

The low point of our shared thought was always – why has our scrum gone from ok (1999 to 2001 say) to bad? (2003 on – and now to the 2014 Spring Tour)?

The scrum generally has weighed enough. Robbie Deans reportedly worked hard on the scrum and the Wallabies’ power to weight ratio (specific muscle groups never mentioned in the reports).

No one ever accused Michael Foley, Patricio Noriega, Evans or Andrew Blades of being dills. John Connolly (Reds, Wallabies) and Ewen McKenzie (Waratahs, Reds, Wallabies) are thoughtful members of the front row club. Our brains trust has surely analysed what the good scrums do.

The Jones era is long behind us.

No one believes the periodic false dawns that say our scrum is now sort of adequate. Surely there has been a cultural shift throughout Australian rugby that sees issues such as feet, body positions, grips, tactics, cohesion and so on now given serious thought at all levels (God, I hope so).

Inexperience? Hardly. These guys play more Tests in four or five years than the old timers did in a lifetime.

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All this brings us to look at wider issues. For example, what changes have been taking place, and importantly how have we responded to change?

Two obvious changes are in the scrum laws and in the physical development of players. Other people will see other pertinent changes.

An earlier example of a scrum law change was the one preventing the hips from being higher than the shoulders. Did our response include the development of an alternative power source to compensate for the loss caused by the law change?

Our responses to the subsequent, ongoing changes in scrum laws are clearly critical – do we in fact have a participatory national structure to assess changes and generate appropriate national responses for implementation? If so, is the scrum panel comprised all the best brains we have?

From the sidelines I watched the World Cup Wallabies (Caloundra 1999 and Southport 2011) train. The change in the body shape of the Wallabies over that period was stunning. The size and power in the hips and thighs etc of the 1999 Wallabies was astonishing. In 2011 the upper body physique was astonishing. There were exceptions in both groups, but overall the transformation was just so significant to see.

No doubt the experts who wrought this change had their reasons, and I would be very interested to hear how the change was designed to benefit the scrummaging technique of the Wallabies.

I have not seen the Wallabies up close in 2014, so I cannot comment on their physical development since the last World Cup, but – there is still quite clearly the lack of the appropriate power.

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I agree entirely with Norm Tasker’s comments on the current shortcomings of the Wallaby forwards when he claimed that the technical improvements still tend to be held back by their lack of size and power.

Of all the possible reasons for our scrum deficiencies, one that might be relevant and readily assessable would be the physical development program.

Some considerations for an assessment:
• Do we agree or not with the martial arts tradition of developing core body muscles as a means of increasing upper body effectiveness?

• Do we agree or not with the view that questions the all-encompassing effectiveness of the weight machines, but particularly in regard to the lower body?

• Do we agree or not with the views of Brad Thorn on the scrum? To quote, “It doesn’t just happen, there’s a lot goes on in there and maybe it might take a lock to understand, I’m not sure.

It’s like getting under a MAX squat. It is not much fun doing a squat, it is intimidating. When you do it you have to hype up and if you do that squat you feel pumped up and scrummaging is like that.

When it is their ball, you have to wait for the ball to come. You can’t just get momentum but as a unit you work together, especially the tight five to go up against another international pack – 900 kilos – and it’s a Test.”

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Among other things, two things do stand out in these comments. Scrum domination is “like getting under a MAX squat.” He did not say it’s like getting under a bench press or any other upper body exercise.

The other thing is the insight into the All Black scrum psychology.

Assessing the Wallaby scrum psychology would of course be looking at one of the other possibilities as a cause of our poor performance.

• Do we agree or not with the assessment of a Wallaby hooker that our provincial teams have mostly been geared up for the mobility and speed sought within their competitions. This leaves them short come Test football time, which is a different game.

• Do we agree or not with the commentators’ claims that the All Black forward is so hard to tackle because of the power of his hips and thighs?

All we rugby followers will have our own views on what is wrong with the Wallaby scrum, but in reality all we can do is trust that the gurus charged with solving the problem have both the wit and the time to do so.

Hopefully, they will not find that our problem is simply a symptom of an underlying one, as it is possible that such a protracted problem has a deep seated cause.

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