Just to get things straight, I’m a Hooker. I should say I was a Hooker really but the feeling never leaves you. So officially I’m a believer but I’m just bored of scrums.
Scotland Vs England on the weekend was admittedly a total horse tranquiliser of a game. I dozed off for about ten minutes of the second half and wished I’d slept through the lot, well at least the scrums.
- The idea of any sort of Hooking contest is long gone.
- They eat up valuable game time.
- You can win the Heineken Cup and Grand Slam with a rubbish one.
Don’t get me wrong I don’t think we should head down the league route with a flaccid leaning formality. In principle, scrums work. In fact last weekend showed as much, four tries were scored direct from scrums, at their best they tie in the forwards and allow for the flashy strike moves, bonza!
All to often though, they are the dullest of affairs. Six men barely managing to control the force of ten others all under the control of one other who in the main, baffles.
Arguably the scrum of the weekend was Ireland taking one against Wales having been camped on their own line for several minutes. Inspiring stuff undoubtedly. The scrum ended up in a heap, Heaslip picks up, Mr Joubert waves play on. So if the side with the upper hand in the scrum has the ball and uses it the Ref waves play on. Seems perfectly acceptable but it isn’t like that all the time, hardly ever, never in fact.
I vote for radical change. A new kind of restart. I’m open to suggestions on what this could be. Rugby was a sport born out of another sport, so it couldn’t hurt to look around for a few suggestions, how about:
Any other suggestions more than welcome
