Scrum woes give pause for thought

SIX NATIONS:IT SEEMS to run and run. It is not the way the Six Nations or the IRB would have planned it but referees have again taken centre stage as Ireland's troubles against France dolefully rolled into last weekend's match against Scotland.

Giving away penalties has been a big problem for the Irish team in recent games and despite a concentrated effort from coach Declan Kidney and the players, it has worryingly persisted.

Resetting scrums has also become a disfiguring part of the game as props struggle to stay within the laws.

The game has changed and the players or the referees, or both, are not seamlessly making the transition.

The argument might be about whose fault that is but the very definite problem remains Ireland players are scoring more tries but then inviting teams back into games by serially drawing penalty decisions upon themselves.

In Sunday’s match the referee was Nigel Owens and on Saturday week it will be Jonathan Kaplan. The result is the scrum is confusing and the tackle to maul area is confusing. Is this what the IRB had planned?

“Oh yes, I think there is great confusion still,” says the venerable former Irish international referee John West. “The new directive where the tackler has to get away from the ball is interpreted in different ways by different referees. And I don’t just mean between the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere referees but by different referees here too. That has always been the way. There is a different style between referees.

“There can be a tendency for referees to concentrate more on one side (team) than the other. That can obviously become a problem. I mean I can see what they are trying to do but it is a recipe for inconsistencies to come into it, especially in a highly volatile, moving game. It’s easy to plan it in your mind.”

When the players tackle and go to ground, they must let go of their opponent and also roll away. Often that is not possible if another player has also come in and are pinning them to the ground.

“To penalise guys who are killing the ball is vital to refereeing,” says West. “But when you get an international match that is decided by a penalty and 10 guys look at it – and I don’t mean punters – and you find six guys going one way and four going the other, that suggests to me it’s not a good law. There is a lot of confusion.”

West, who whistled in 20 Test games between 1974 and 1989 and has officiated in 20 countries, was the first visiting referee to be given a Test match in New Zealand, in 1979. His affections rest with the game and the referees but the scrum and the current engagement sequence, he believes, is a “major problem” area.

“The scrum is not satisfactory at all,” he says. “It is a major problem. I do not think what they have now is the right solution. I think the pause destabilises the scrum and actually makes it a great deal worse. The players are not all going into the engagement at the same time. Another major issue is the amount of time taken on the scrum to make it come good. If you look at a match, they are constantly re-setting the scrums.

“I think if they all hold back and if the two frontrows are ready, I don’t believe you need the sequence at all. I’d say crouch, engage. This has become a problem now for the frontrows.”