Speed up scrums and ping those who loiter

ANY sport that allows a non-event like the forming of a scrum to last for a minute and a half – or more – before the front rows are even ready to engage, as is now a regular occurrence, is going to lose players and fans. This rank failing in modern professional Rugby Union has been brought home over the last week, both by comments from Sale DoR Steve Diamond, and by the emergence of a new hybrid game called ‘Rugby Rules’, which has been developed by David Moffett, the former WRU chief executive, and Topo Rodriguez, the renowned former Pumas and Wallaby tight-head. Diamond, himself a former hooker, declared that, “what King Herod was to babysitting, scrums are to entertainment in rugby”, while Rugby Rules incorporates a radical speeding-up of scrums. In the firing line is the give-me-my-life-back time wasting that is still tolerated by too many referees, in the Premiership and elsewhere. The multi-stage engagement they preside over is a joke, especially as the safety it is meant to promote ends so frequently in scrum collapses and protracted resets. The key to ending a farce which is undermining the scrum as one of the great contests in the game is for referees to insist that players form-up within 15 seconds of it being called. The meandering and chatting – which referee Matthew Carley almost seemed to encourage during the Bristol v Saracens match has got to end. Putting the game on pause for scrums has crept insidiously into the pro game, mainly to give a breather to muscle-bound forwards who cannot play the full 80 minutes. Get the packs to form up quickly, and then engage without putting the shove on until the ball is put-in – with any early ‘hit’ penalised. Job done.