Jeff Probyn: Why didn’t they consult those who know about the scrum?

With less than a week until the start of the new season we are told that the whole structure of the modern game is in the balance. If we are to believe not just the IRB, but also my old mate Brian Moore, we are at the last chance saloon for what I and many think is one of the fundamental pillars of the game – the scrum.
At a meeting in Paris arranged by the IRB, all the top referees were addressed by not only John Jeffrey (a member of the IRB’s task group on the scrum) on the importance of the enforcement of the new engagement sequence and policing the straight put-in but also Brian who even had them scrummaging against each another.
It has been reported that both John and Brian reiterated the fact that this was the last chance to get it right.
Why they perceive this is the last chance I am not sure but given that a three-year examination by an independent scrum group costing £500,000 has come up with this new engagement sequence, one would think it should be effective.
My concern is that an independent group of scrum experts is a description that you’d think would include people who play or have played in the front row at all levels – but that is not the case.
Half a million pounds and yet, as far as I know, the IRB did not consult either current or past players despite receiving endless offers of help from that great former Argentina and Australia front-row Enrique (Topo) Rodriguez and the Scrum Experts Lobby (an association of international coaches and players with experience of coaching and playing in the front row) and have gone ahead to produce a report that had little or no front-row player input.
It would appear the only reason Brian was invited to the referees’ conference was because he, in his role as a commentator, had criticised the mess created come scrum-time on the BBC website. That public condemnation highlighted to the IRB the concerns of fans and broadcasters at the downtime between collapses and scrum re-sets, which had the potential to reduce viewer loyalty and therefore revenues.
The scrum review group was a technical one in the sense that it involved universities measuring the level of impact in various engagement sequences in live scrums and against scrum machines and found that the new crouch, bind, set generated 25 per cent less impact than previous calls.
This is not a major surprise, as the packs now form much closer than the traditional ‘arms length’ as a result of the need to pre-bind.
Although that shorter distance reduces the impact, there is still an impact which does expose another potential risk of injury because players have had to change the angle at which they engage the opposition and have far less time to adjust if they are in slightly the wrong place, but that shouldn’t be a problem if the props are technically competent.
My worry is that not many props have been taught the techniques and an entire generation have now lived, played and been coached in the ‘hit’ scrum.
If you know about front-row play it is not that difficult to teach the necessary skills to protect yourself in a scrum but it is not something that is coached which I think means the risk has increased here and we may only see the consequences in five or ten years.
A number of players, including former Wallaby Phil Kearns, has raised concerns about the hooker having to raise his foot to strike for the ball. I must admit I find this hard to believe given that hookers were striking for the ball for any number of years before and it was always down to the props to deal with the pressure from the opposition. A good technical tighthead prop should be able to hold a scrum stationary and take the weight of the hooker even against bigger and more powerful opposition.
During my career, I usually played against players that outweighed me by between two and seven stone, while Brian was one of the smallest international hookers around, weighing in at only 14 ½ stone and had to compete with players like Tom Lawton who weighed 18½ stone.
Fortunately a scrum is not all about individuals, it’s about the team work by the eight players that form it, so all I had to do was get into the right position to support Brian and, with my second row and back row (Wade Dooley and Micky Skinner), hold our side of the scrum.
In the late Eighties and early Nineties I was part of an England front row that was well-respected and, dare I say, feared throughout the game as being one of the best in the world.
During that time the first referee-led engagement was brought in to stop a new phenomenon called charging, in an effort to reduce injuries and improve player welfare. Charging was where the two packs stood a distance apart and literally charged into each other – rather similar to the modern hit, with the specific aim of disrupting the opposition scrum before the ball came in.
It was also at this time that a series of injuries to young players in New Zealand who were trying to emulate their heroes led to the U19 (now U20) variations at the scrum, which effectively emasculated it to a non-contest element within the game.
The worry is that if the new sequence doesn’t work, or creates more injuries, the IRB’s next move will maybe be to roll out the U20 variations across the game!