The identity crisis of the Wallaby scrum

Ever since the first Test matches of the early 1900s and probably even before that, as a game, rugby has been all about identity.

Positions, forward packs, back-lines, teams and nations by the nature of the game tend to develop unique personalities that we come to know, love and watch. The persistence in this truth of the game into the post-1995 professional era is what makes our game, in my opinion, one of the most engaging spectacles anywhere in the world.

Along these lines I find the continued criticism of Nick Phipps’ never-shut-up nature just a tad unwarranted. Is it ideal? No. But Phipps is a halfback, and having played a lot of rugby at a lot of clubs I’ll say that the biggest smartarse in the place usually makes the best halfback.

Objecting to Phipps for running his mouth would be like condemning like Israel Folau for having that stupid speed stripe carved in his hair – it’s just what outside backs do (for some reason). But I digress…

Entering the cauldron of Estadio Malvinas Argentinas in Mendoza, to confront the famed eight-man push, or “Bajada” of the Argentinian national rugby team’s scrum was always going to be where push came to shove (pun intentional) for the Wallaby pack.

So notorious is the Bajada it has become something of a cliché in rugby journalism, rightly so. The question then is what does Australia have to offer in response?

To ask the question another way, what is the identity of the Wallaby scrum?

To be blunt, Australia’s scrum is undergoing something of an identity crisis. It’s hard to pinpoint the moment that this started, but it was around the turn of the millennium. At this time there was mounting pressure to change the laws of rugby, with one major driver being the catastrophic effect that the scrums of the time had on the viability of the game as a spectator sport.

Collapse after collapse made it a tedious affair for all involved with even die-hard fans who played in the front-row, myself included, conceding that it was all getting a bit frustrating to watch.

During this era, the opposing front rows had no continuous contact prior to the engagement so the hit and the bind would happen concurrently. The position of the prop’s body and bind therefore would be much less consistent from one scrum to the next and the outcome of the engagement decided the result of a scrum before the ball was even fed.

Encouraged by accepted interpretation of the laws at the time, a prop not satisfied with his body position after the engagement could, should he wish to, elect to quickly collapse the scrum and buy himself a reset and another shot at it without being at significant risk of incurring a penalty.

At about the same time, Australia’s front-row stocks were decimated by retirement. Phil Kearns, Dan Crowley and Andrew Blades all retired in 1999 with Richard Harry and Michael Foley following suit in 2001. In short we lost five World Cup-winning front rowers in the space of two years, with Kearns and Crowley among only six players ever to have done so twice.

This ushered in an era where we lacked players with the physical and technical ability to compete directly at the scrum.

So instead Australian props turned to guile in an attempt to remain competitive, taking advantage of the breadth in the laws for collapsing and more than a little showmanship to confuse referees and draw penalties. And so, the Australian scrum gained its identity and became (in)famous for exploiting the rules to gain the upper hand – a style which reached its peak in the Bill Young/Al Baxter era of the early to mid 2000s.

In fact, I would argue that 2001 was the last time Australia actually fielded a world-class front row and the results give an indication of just how important this has been – we won the Bledisloe the following year (2002) and haven’t captured a World Cup or another Bledisloe since.

Absolute success aside, this identity did allow Australia to stay near the top of the world rankings for about a decade as one spectacular backline after another struggled behind one mediocre pack after another.

The problem now is that the rules have changed. Over time the IRB, now known as World Rugby, worked to improve the laws of the game with a process that commenced with the ELVs in 2006 and continues to this day with further changes to scrum laws occurring in 2013 and while Argentina were honing the Bajada to a razor’s edge Australia were focusing on their “surprised face” and how to land nose down in the dirt without getting hurt.

The changes to the Laws of Rugby, which have been a revelation for the game and greatly improved it for players and spectators alike, in particular those introduced in late 2013 where the scrum must “bind” and then “set” have forced Australia to face our greatest fear at scrum time – a clean and direct contest for the ball.

After 10 plus years of bad habits, it appears that Australia has forgotten how and so the introduction of that law in 2013 has coincided with Australia’s slump to a lowest-ever sixth in the world rankings.

Worse still, a decade of frankly fairly cynical tactics have tarnished the reputation of the Australian scrum with World Rugby and its referees alike so now it is no longer good enough to be “as good” – because the powers are committed to hunting the Wallaby front-rower to extinction.

It’s therefore more important than ever that the Wallaby front-row is on its best behaviour, which is a problem considering that it doesn’t even really know what it is.

Argentina has the Bajada. South Africa has long built a gameplan around a power scrum. The English and French may still be bickering about some war-related marital issues over a century old, but can agree that dominance in the forwards is the foundation of a rugby team.

The same is true of Six Nations champions Ireland and third-placed finisher (behind England) Wales. In fact pretty much the whole Northern Hemisphere seems to have an obsession with the scrum, probably because its is all the more important when the weather is rubbish.

Anyone else see a pattern here? In pointing to the teams who have a scrum with a dominant identity I’ve inadvertently named six of the top eight teams in the world; the other two being Australia (who we’ve covered) and New Zealand.

New Zealand tend to opt for a slightly smaller, more mobile scrum and so perhaps are not as outwardly prolific in this area as some others. However, as a follow up they also tend to play rugby in every aspect, about as well as it is possible to do.

Michael Cheika was quoted by Phil Lutton in Friday’s Sydney Morning Herald as saying “I’m big on the identity of the team, as opposed to the culture”.

It gave me great pleasure to read in that same article that included in the Wallabies finding their identity would be a few nights out “in which the occasional sore head the next morning won’t result in disciplinary action”.

I called for this in an article last year as a way to repair the overtly cracked bonds between the players, knowing full well that in the same way Nick Phipps will never quite shut-up, these nights are in the DNA of rugby and the rightful place of a front rower is at the bar.

The signing of Mario Ledesma and week-to-week variation in the Australian tight five demonstrate just how focused Cheika is on this aspect of the game, but having been demolished by the Pumas and their Bajada, what is next for Australia?

Following a similar demolition at the hands of the starting Springboks pack last week, Greg “the immovable object” Holmes was broadly touted as the solution to our front-row woe.

I feel vindicated, if only in the forum of pub debate, as this week proved (again) that the problem lies at least in part on the loosehead side of the scrum.

The Rugby Universe can argue all day about the advantage Scott Sio has coming on late in the game, the changes in his own and the opposing front-row and the issues on the tighthead side but the simple fact is this; against both South Africa and Argentina the Australian scrum has only looked competitive when Sio has been in the loosehead position.

The incumbent James Slipper by contrast struggled to hold his feet in both attacking and defensive engagements, and as a result had to raise his body height sufficiently to allow his opposing number to embarrass him on Sunday morning.

Slipper is clearly a dedicated player, and an important leadership figure in the Australian squad but right now he represents the Wallaby prop of a bygone era and needs to be benched and coached until his scrummaging improves substantially.

At this point it is a coin flip for me as to who should partner Sio should his necessary selection eventuate, but if it was up to me Holmes would get the nod against the technical proficiency of the All Black scrum.

Both the Rugby Championship and the possibility of competing for the Bledisloe are on the line when Australia square off with New Zealand in Sydney next week and as sweet as the 34–9 on Sunday morning appears Australia will need to find another gear in the scrum if they are to have a chance of conquering the mighty All Blacks.

Prior to the Australian assault in the final 10 minutes the match was fiercely contested, and in the balance until the final 20.

Australia’s inability to close the match earlier was thanks in large part to numerous scrum free-kicks and penalties being forced by the Pumas who failed to capitalise on the opportunities they were presented.

The All Blacks will not be so forgiving, so if there was ever a time to give young Scott Sio a chance to prove his mettle, the first Bledisloe in Sydney is that time.

With Stephen Moore, who is in spectacular touch, Australia’s front-row with Sio, Holmes, Kepu and James Slipper (as a very handy reserve) can start to forge a new identity in the scrum; in which I suspect Cheika will want to look something like a hybrid between the power of the modern game and that Australian cunning of old.

As a prospect, that identity reminds me more than a little of a certain Trans-Tasman rival who we are aiming to topple in our next Test so what better time is there to start the journey?

If the can achieve that, it will allow our routinely spectacular backline to really fire and perform in the way we have all been hoping to see for so long and in the process perhaps achieve the impossible and recapture those lofty heights of 1999.

Alex is an ex-rugby player with 10 seasons under his belt, almost exclusively with the brains trust up in the front row. Despite passion for the game, his best work was usually seen at the pub post-match where he mastered the dark-art of talking bollocks about rugby.

You can follow Alex on Instagram @whiskyandiron and Twitter @alexwood_1.