“Nine hundred kilos behind you”
Jeremy Paul packed down at hooker for the Wallabies from 1998 to 2006. He knows what a scrum weighs. He is also done being polite about it.
The former Australia international has gone after the brake foot, the foot a hooker must plant flat in the middle of the tunnel before the hit. His case rests on a single picture. One man, one foot nailed to the turf, seven team-mates up on their toes, and nine hundred kilos arriving from the other side.
“We will end up with hookers who are 1.65m, because once you are above 1.88m, it gets very hard,” he told the GBRANZ podcast. He then called whoever at World Rugby dreamed the law up four years ago an idiot, and did not appear to regret it.
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Neil Barnes said the quiet part out loud
The row reopened last weekend. New Zealand were pinged twice inside the opening exchanges against the Springboks, a free kick and then a penalty, with referee Karl Dickson unhappy about All Black foot placement.
Neil Barnes, the New Zealand forwards coach, answered with a line that travelled fast: nobody cares about this rule any more. Kieran Read, sitting on the same panel, went the same way. Keep the scrum standing, get the ball out, move on. Nobody buys a ticket to watch five resets.
World Rugby has held its position since the law came in. More stability in the setup, less axial load, less punishment for heads and necks. Safety on one side of the argument, front rowers on the other, and no obvious meeting point.
His fix is one word long: hips
Paul did not stop at complaining. The scrum, he reckons, is decided at the hips and never at the feet. Let the hips drift and the whole thing folds.
So the loosehead prop keeps his hips welded to the hooker’s. On opposition ball he has to open them, because there is nowhere else to go. The referee stands on the feeding side and gets a clean look at the far shoulder. If the defending loosehead’s hips collapse, that is his problem to answer for.
Neat enough on a podcast. Refereeing it at a Test scrum, at speed, with two packs lying about who moved first, is something else again. Paul’s Wallabies get those Springboks soon enough.
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