Scrumming is the hot topic of debate for all Bok rugby fans right now.

There are plenty of opinions and hotly debated arguements about the ability or lack therof  of coaches and players when it comes to trying to answer the question:

What has happened to our scrumming?

Let’s examine the issues that are complicating the scrum today and look at solutions to make the scrum more easily understood by both referees, players and fans.

The first problem is in the law interpretation of the referees.

• Unless a referee has had the experience of playing prop at a reasonable level, he simply does not know for sure who is guilty of transgression of the rules at scrum time.
• Seeing as there are no ex props athletic enough in their retirement years to reach the top of the refeering tree, what is obviously needed is for referees to be educated in the mechanics as well as the tricks of the trade in the front row.
• Referees should be schooled by former international props as part of their regular training.
• Now, every former prop does not necessarily make a good scrumming coach, or even somebody who can impart the correct knowledge, however the right men should be found and should be an integral part of referee training.
• With this system in place, there will still be the odd bad call, however I can assure you that 90% of the calls will be correct, which is a better result than we are currently getting.

The second problem we have is that we do not have a clear, distinctive and unified scrumming policy as a rugby nation.

• It seems that from the local under ten school team up to national level, there is a vast difference in coaching of scrums and just as importantly a different mental approach to the importance or lack therof of scrumming in the game.
• Scrumming is the Achilles heel of most SA coaches.
• Because it is the one extremely technical area of the game that they least understand they are silently uncomfortable with it, and instead of embracing it they try to avoid it and more often than not talk around it when confronted with the kind of technical questions that are now being raised about our scrumming.
• We need to take the mystery out of the scrums.
• We need to establish a national scrumming school that develops a scrumming pattern that is South African.
• However this cannot be achieved until we decide at national level that other teams are better than us at scrumming and that we are prepared to invest in the manpower and structures to change that and become the best scrumming team in world rugby.
• In short we cannot resolve our scrumming woes without the desire to recognize the problem and do something about it.
• A national scrumming school will ensure that all teams at all levels apply the same technique, strategy, discipline and attitude to the scrum.

The importance of this from a safety point of view cannot be overstated.

I have watched many primary school rugby matches in which the technical level of scrumming has scared the hell out of me, in that I expect some young boy to get badly hurt, as a result of very poor scrumming by sixteen boys who simply don’t know any better, just like their coaches.

Scrumming is often called a science, and sometimes an art.

There are many aspects to scrumming correctly, and I cannot take you through the comprehensive theory of how to build a scrum here, suffice to say that there is a system and method to build a scrum that can be taught, and with discipline and practise I can assure you results in any team that is willing to learn.

Provided the right players are identified, the technical issues around binding, body position, leg position and timing are easily taught to all eight.

Thereafter the more technical issues in the front row, depending on whether you are training a loose head or tight head and depending upon who has the put in and what the score and field position are in the game, are also teachable to a willing student, who then needs to perfect these things with game time.

The current debate around our poor scrumming is very shallow as it does not address these long term issues mentioned above, any is too easily about selection of players.

We have bred a generation of props who are not as technically astute as they should be.

We cannot expect results on the field with short term fixes like playing props out of position and chopping and changing front rows too often.

We also cannot have coaches hiding behind the excuse that the national team scrummed badly on a Tuesday night because they did not have enough time to practise together, when we see absolute schoolboy errors in scrum technique and application from the Boks.

It is time for our national coaches to start the turn around of our scrumming by respecting the scrum, recognizing their lack of knowledge and putting the right people in charge of scrumming.