Irish referee Andrew Brace is confident in his assertion: “I know there’s been a lot of negativity thrown around the scrum, but it’s probably in the best place it’s ever been.”
Try telling that to England fans.
The insight from Brace, who has just returned from his first World Cup campaign as a referee, is all too prudent given how influential the scrum was to South Africa’s World Cup success. The set-piece earned them their match-winning penalty in the semi-final vs England, while the quarter-final comeback against France was largely built on second-half scrum dominance.
Cue a debate on the scrum’s role in rugby. Should matches be won and lost on decisions made in such a maelstrom of moving parts and roving flesh?
For now, publicly at least, that is not World Rugby’s concern. What they are instead focused on is creating a legal consensus, a scrum framework that allows for consistent officiating that can be explained.
Who decides what can and cannot be done come scrum time - in other words who plays God - is another matter entirely. As Brace himself readily admits, “A lot of referees have never played in the scrum.”
Instead, the experts have been brought in. New Zealander Mike Cron is a veteran forwards coach of five men’s World Cups and one women’s - a successful run with the Black Ferns in 2022. He has been tasked by World Rugby with making sense of all the moving parts and telling officials what to look out for.
Crucially, his work is shared with teams. “He’ll be working with the scrum coaches as well,” says Brace of Cron. “The buy-in has been incredible over the last couple of years; the improvement around the scrum to get that consensus as a group of scrum coaches, whereas it was never that way 10 years ago.
Cron started his consultant work with World Rugby at the start of this World Cup cycle, spending the period around the most recent tournament as an in-person sounding board for officials. “He audits every scrum penalty, comments on everything,” says Brace.
“He was with us for two months. I could sit down over a coffee and go through clips with him, just get his whole view around how a scrum coach or player would be looking at the scrum, it’s invaluable.”
It’s not just the scrum. World Rugby has called in the big guns - literally - to divulge expertise in other complicated areas where bone colliding on bone creates a seemingly ungovernable mess. Former Springbok lock Victor Matfield does similar work with the lineout maul.
Back to the scrum - the lingering question throughout this deep dive remains unanswered. To return to more parochial interests, after Ireland’s quarter-final defeat to New Zealand, former England and Lions prop Alex Corbisiero posted a video on social media analysing a series of scrum penalties given against Ireland.
One penalty, he says, was unfairly given against Andrew Porter. Another, again given against the Leinster loosehead, Corbisiero agreed with. Mike Ross responded saying he disagreed, that Porter was harshly pinged on both occasions. Interestingly, Corbisiero took up Cron’s World Rugby guru role when the latter was winning a women’s World Cup with New Zealand.
Corbisiero and Ross are former international props, the ones who are supposed to be experts on the issue. If they cannot agree, then what hope do you or I have? More pertinently, what hope has a referee who is self-aware of his lack of experience in this area? Can a consensus on what constitutes scrum legality be achieved?
Again, Brace is fairly adamant: “Yes.”
“The big thing Cronno has been massive on is best practice. Not going out there to cheat, going out there with really positive ways of scrumming, setting up for success.
“It makes our job so much easier to referee post that, if you get the buy-in on the set-up. If you [a prop] start fighting or messing around on the bind phase, the knock-on effect that has, if the scrum is on the floor you can’t referee it because we don’t have the ball in, we don’t have a contest.
“We always say that: ‘Buy-in on set-up.’ Teams will always try and get a head start, find an angle. But if you get that buy-in on set-up, it’s much easier to referee. You can monitor angles, you can monitor heights of props, whereas if a scrum collapses on engagement, a lot of the time you don’t know who’s at fault.
It almost sounds too good to be true. If frontrows set up when throwing their arms around each other pre scrum in the way that Brace, via Cron, is looking for, then all can be monitored after that.
After Ireland’s World Cup defeat, Andy Farrell said that Ireland had “a different view” to referee Wayne Barnes when it came to the scrum. If consensus is indeed possible, it may well have not trickled fully from Cron and the referees to the coaching staffs.
Maybe it needs more time. Cron has been in his role for four years, perhaps not long enough to change behaviours and embed habits.
Possible or otherwise, striving for consistency is laudable. If the same messaging is given to players and coaches, then they ultimately have only themselves to blame for erring. Provided there is no human error from the officials, which will always be present occasionally.
Disagreement will forever be a part of a game which Brace himself labels as “subjective.” But if just a hint of subjectivity has been removed, then maybe the scrum is indeed in a better place.
