Will the scrum be an image of the past?
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The Daily Telegraph's Mick Cleary looks at the growing debate over the scrum and argues that the IRB need to throw their weight behind the much-maligned aspect of the game.
"To those who say that the scrum needs to be downgraded or streamlined or depowered or given a spell in the naughty corner for repeated misdemeanours, many of us say ‘clear off and follow another sport’.
It’s best to make that clear before we set off looking to cure the ills of the scrummage, for there are any number of boneheads who will use the opportunity of a certain malaise with our dear friend, the tight scrum, to advocate outlawing it or reducing it to a neutered state, no better than a rugby league scrum which is essentially a restart mechanism.
Union’s scrum must never be seen in such a light, merely as a means of getting the game under way again. That’s called a kick-off or, at a stretch, a tap penalty, and even that requires a certain amount of nerve and sense of opportunism. A scrum is so much more than a coming together of 16 heavyweights just so that the backs can get to play with the ball."
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