Crouch, touch, pause, engage, collapse, ping! Yawn

RUGBY:The advent of 'crouch, touch' etc has been necessary, but it was supposed to solve rather than create problems, writes RISTEARD COOPER

ODE TO THE SCRUM

The pulse races, the clenched faces,

As latecomers strain to take their places,

High in the air the secondrow climbs,

The stand-off relieves with an easy touch-find

Lineout lift but it goes forward

Peep, peep ref! A scrum’s awarded

Oh no, here we go!

Time for a snooze or a swifty, so!

Squat low and out with the asses

Mind lapses, the scrum collapses

Crouch, touch, pause, engage

Yawn, scratch, more delays

Ouch! oops! we all fall down

No one knows why and the ref’s a clown

Whistle blows! well someone’s to blame!

Point at the one most clearly in pain

Is this the spectacle we pay all our dough for?

A bunch of fatties who keep falling over?

End this nonsense, cease this farce

Crouch, touch, pause . . . me arse!

It may sound a little churlish to ask, but do the IRB actually know what they’re doing? How does a referee with only one Six Nations game under his belt get to be the man in the middle for Ireland’s trip to Italy last Saturday? Especially as that one game was for the same fixture in the same tournament 12 months ago.

With that sort of planning you’d expect Fianna Fáil involvement, but the one consistent irritant to all who play, coach and watch the game is the scrum, the long scrums, the very long scrums, which are getting longer and longer. Now I may be wrong, but Monsieur Poite doesn’t look like he spent much time in the scrum. Indeed, I’d wager he couldn’t organise the frontrow in a team photograph – which is arguably worse than the Fianna Fáil label of not being able to organise a piss-up in a brewery. Although, to be fair, that’s probably the one area in which FF lead the way. In fact, you could say they could even organise a piss-up at a team photograph.

Admittedly, not too many large units from the packs of yesteryear go on to become international referees. Presumably this is because after they retire, the last thing they’d want to do is to run around desperately trying to keep up with a bunch of young eejits for the afternoon. They probably never did it as players so why would they do it as refs? The scrum appears to have got so technical and its practitioners so cute at getting one over on the ref, it’s reached the point now where the IRB should employ a specialist “scrum ref”, ie an ex-frontrower who’d appear from the sidelines solely to adjudicate the scrums and then waddle off again having made his decision. At least he might have some idea what’s going on in there. The current method of refereeing the scrum appears to be as follows:

When in doubt (ie always) blow the whistle very loudly, wave your arms about, pointing at a prop. For added emphasis, gesticulate, generally with one hand, hold your radio microphone close to your mouth with the other and shout “captain’, motioning the perplexed skipper for a “private” word. A penalty and a warning ensues and no one is any the wiser.

The advent of “crouch, touch” etc may be necessary, but surely it was introduced to solve rather than create problems? If it’s left to Paddy O’Brien and Co is it only a matter of time before every lineout starts with “grab, lift, extend and catch”, or every ruck with “bend, lift, clear and dump”? Of course we can’t blame the ref for everything, unfortunately, but regardless of the nature of the pre-match relationship between Poite, Mallett and Casrogiovanni in Rome, it’s probably best to step away and move on, or to quote Father Kidney, “We tried things that didn’t come off, but we’ll take it on board, have a look at it and learn from our mistakes.”

Now while that might sound like a master class in vague ball, or a sound-bite in Ireland’s plan for recovery, you wouldn’t get much more insight into the French team from the BBC’s Welsh wizard, Jonathan Davies, who holds the unique position of having the worst voice on TV and the highest propensity to state the obvious. Now that’s some achievement. You’d imagine most people who had a voice like a masonry drill operating on one battery would have the decency not to say too much, but Davies’ constant observation “That’s the difference” during France v Scotland was utterly mind-boggling. “That’s the difference,” he said for the eight time after Maxime Medard’s opening try, as if to demonstrate the gulf in class. “There you see how important pace is. When you’re chasing a kick, pace is vital.” And just in case you didn’t get the subtlety of that observation, he repeated it over the action replay, “There you see? Pace. That’s the difference.” So just to compound that for the viewers at home . . . Ahhh!!!

Against Ireland, the French might argue their monster scrum is a more “vital” ingredient and their lightning-quick backs are merely hundreds and thousands, if very tasty ones. Clement Poitrenaud starting at fullback instead of Damien Traille who moves to the centre is hardly a set-back. Regardless of Ireland’s injuries, selection issues or form, as with all games in the current climate the most important man on the pitch will be the man in the middle, in this case England’s Dave Pearson.

Maybe at today’s team announcement Deccie should read out Pearson’s letter of apology for the way he handled all of Ireland’s previous matches? Deccie would never stoop so. Mr Pearson the scrum is yours, GET ON WITH IT!!!