Scrum Focus:The international scrum can be a thing of beauty to behold, but it requires skill. Most players can benefit from taking time to understand its potent influence on the game, writes Liam Toland
WHAT IS THE difference between an International scrum and a Stradivarius? You won’t get killed playing the Stradivarius. The name “Stradivarius” has become a superlative often associated with excellence whose quality and sound has defied attempts to explain or reproduce. Sound familiar? The international scrum, like the Stradivarius, is a thing of beauty that will forever remain impossible to explain and for some this Six Nations will be impossible to reproduce.
There are few in Irish rugby that can equate a scrum to the Stradivarius. I had the privilege of observing in my playing days (as I was but a backrow) two, TW Roland ‘Roly’ Meates and Des Fitzgerald in full flight. They bring untold amounts of knowledge to a much underutilised attacking force – one which Keith Wood readily admits to “loving it”.
Let me give you my two cents bit. The maximum size of a rugby union pitch is 6,900
sq m. The scrum corrals 18 players into 40 sq m, leaving 12 players to play with 6,860 sq m. Why, then, the lack of attack? Can we expect the Six Nations teams to exploit the 15 or so scrums each match? With so much space, Ireland need to prioritise the tight head as a scrummager. Suffice to say the Irish fullback and tight head are intrinsically linked at scrum time. Why? And how does the defensive scrum scupper the attack?
Another man close to home has even more love for analysing, experimenting and teaching the Stradivarius of scrummaging. I recently hooked up with a genuine artisan of all things scrummaging. The role of the set up, the hit, the bind, the feet position, the chasing through, the unit itself were all discussed. He is a true practitioner following the age old form of teaching EDIP – Explain, Demonstrate, Imitate and Practise. Yes, at 64 years of age, Seamus Harty, from the well-known Ryan Harty Menswear Shop in Nenagh, does exactly that.
Harty was recently united through Ollie Campbell with his long-lost scrum brother Roly Meates. After a brief telephone discussion, they decided to meet. Harty, being the younger (sorry Roly), agreed to travel to Dublin. After waxing lyrical for 10 minutes, they abandoned the “explanation” phase and headed into the “demonstration” phase. For more than two hours, these grown men locked horns in Roly’s scrum cave. There, nearly 90 years of experimentation came pouring out.
Harty, standing at 5ft 8in with a fighting weight of 13st 2lbs, is the antithesis of our modern-day tight head and who, at times, resembles a sprightly Jackie Kyle. It’s all very fine locking down against Roly, but a modern prop would surely kill him. Harty believes passionately that size does not matter – but only when you can do what you want.
Carl Hayman, the world’s leading tight head stands at 6ft 4in and weighs nearly 18st 9lbs. A tidy sum, no doubt. He can pretty much do what he wants at scrum time. Why then so much controversy with our big boys? To illustrate his point, Harty often asks big fellows to pack down against him as he did in a well-known Limerick club. On pinning the unsuspecting prop, he then continued to talk him through the vagaries of the trajectory of the arm, the subsequent bind, the head position and finally the feet. Clearly, he couldn’t perform in a full pack, but one-on-one, he generally has the technique to cope.
The key to the Irish scrum this Six Nations, like any business in our troubled economy, is a fervent commitment to the basics. According to Harty, most scrums fail around the bind. For our tight heads, this is the key – firstly to survival and secondly to dominance. In everything Harty explains, demonstration follows immediately as he firstly mimics the tight head stance (similar in ways to a boxer). He then explains in detail the bind. As this is the key to scrummaging, I began to wonder how many referees and practitioners have benefited from this tuition. For obvious reasons, we discuss at length the tight head. Harty is very insistent on the crouch (relax), touch (relax), pause (relax) and engage as the method. Like an Olympic lifter, the tight head must focus totally on the engage with the hit being crucial, which allows the winner to scrummage with knees behind hips. The head must not give space to the loose head, as doing so will allow him to manoeuvre. On “touch”, the tight head should never touch the shoulder but the bicep. The trajectory of his arm is absolutely crucial. This will allow the tight head to mimic a boxer’s upper cut and, using his elbow, trap the loose head’s arm. Too often, our big boys use their forearm. Between his head placement and fixing the arm he will control the loose head.
Interestingly, he insists that the number 8 is the man to lead the hit. Second rows and backrows must never drop a knee and on binding, must rotate their arms into the quarter to three position. The number 8 is the sprinter of the pack and must be in the blocks ready to fire the scrum in on “engage”. The front row is poised and teetering on the brink, sitting on the second rows. Wing forwards must be square and scrummage on their full shoulder.
I agreed with Harty, but I also tried to explain the world that a backrow experiences on his own line. Think of packing down at blindside on a scrum five metres out with a 15m blindside. Now think of Sean O’Brien packing down at the opposition’s base readying himself to plough over me. Do I really care about the tight head’s position? No, I’ve enough problems of my own.
Harty calmly goes on to explain the value of his philosophy. Once again, I’m sucked in. Toulon, as Harty points out, managed on two occasions to more than nullify the Munster scrum and protect their backrow. A massive Toulon hit was followed by “chasing the hit”. On presentation of the Munster ball, Toulon all stepped to the left, depowered Munster, dipped in height and powered forward. In doing so, they completely destabilised the Munster scrum and backrow, neutralising any possible attack. Harty pauses and then asks; think of the effect on the Munster front row’s necks?
How can you prevent such a recurrence? Once again, Harty returns to the symbiotic relationship between the bind and “chasing the hit”. One action is to follow the shift left by cantering right. Almost impossible, as when will Toulon decide to shift? The focus must return to the Irish tight head fixing his loose head firmly, no space at all to adjust. He then traps the loose head’s arm/bind and locks him in place. Chasing the hit becomes crucial. Harty is at pains to point out that this is not an act similar to pushing the scrummaging machine 15m down the pitch, as is customary in clubs. He talks about violently fixing the opposition prop in place with head, arm/bind and feet, starving him of his power and oxygen that will prevent him moving an inch, be it left, right, forward or back. That, scrum lovers, is “chasing the hit”.
As we parted company I felt deeply honoured to have shared an evening with a true expert and exponent of a skill that is integral to our game, and one which is unfortunately slowly slipping away from our clubs. I couldn’t help feel a pang of sadness that men like Harty and Meates have so much to offer, and it is through men of such calibre that our future scrums can prosper. Harty, like many before him, prided himself in being self-taught, experimenting with his 13 stones to wreak much havoc on his invariably bigger opponents. He admits that since hanging up his playing boots, he has devoted – like Meates – his time to understanding the scrum and its potential influence on the game. In the world of academia, he would be a professor, constantly learning, exploring and, most importantly, teaching future coaches the arts.
I leave you with Seamus Harty’s knowledge – but ask the questions. How does all this science translate into reality? How do referees and players cope? Do they cheat (referees players)? I look forward to Friday’s column in the main paper and thrashing this scrummaging thorny chestnut out.
