I was going to start a new thread but this one seems suitable because of the title.
Last Saturday I was observing a match and the scrums were a nightmare. Cuttig a long story fairly short, it was one of those matches where several of the front row were simply messing about and nothing the ref seemed to do alleviated the problem. (He didn't have active ARs - that would have sorted the problem.) We agreed after the match that he should have simply sent off a couple of props and got another couple on.
Anyway, towards the end of the match (last 15 mins.) one of the props was substituted and for the last six scrums there were absolutely no problems. Except that every scrum on the new prop’s side (he came on as a loose head – the previous one was a T/H.) was illegally bound. The new L/H was much quicker to the ‘bind’ and always had his arm above the T/H. Neither prop objected, both were comfortable and there was much needed stability at the scrum. So the question is, should the referee have had a management word at least and/or penalised or leave things as they were considering what went on before?
Last Saturday I was observing a match and the scrums were a nightmare. Cuttig a long story fairly short, it was one of those matches where several of the front row were simply messing about and nothing the ref seemed to do alleviated the problem. (He didn't have active ARs - that would have sorted the problem.) We agreed after the match that he should have simply sent off a couple of props and got another couple on.
Anyway, towards the end of the match (last 15 mins.) one of the props was substituted and for the last six scrums there were absolutely no problems. Except that every scrum on the new prop’s side (he came on as a loose head – the previous one was a T/H.) was illegally bound. The new L/H was much quicker to the ‘bind’ and always had his arm above the T/H. Neither prop objected, both were comfortable and there was much needed stability at the scrum. So the question is, should the referee have had a management word at least and/or penalised or leave things as they were considering what went on before?
