Scotland v Ireland (Men's)

[whatisthejava]

refs have been told not to give scrum penas if the ball can come out or your not going back at a rate of knots

[hugh_woatmeigh]

refs have been told not to give scrum penas if the ball can come out or your not going back at a rate of knots

Ridiculous. We really did have Ireland under all sorts of pressure at the scrum. Shame not to see it rewarded.

[Big D]

refs have been told not to give scrum penas if the ball can come out or your not going back at a rate of knots

It's mental. Part of the reason Healy wasn't getting his head shoved out his arse was because he stood up.

[whatisthejava]

refs have been told not to give scrum penas if the ball can come out or your not going back at a rate of knots

It's mental. Part of the reason Healy wasn't getting his head shoved out his arse was because he stood up.

Again only parroting info i have heard but refs have been told to speed up the game around scrum so if the ball can come out the ref calls play on.

[Cameo]

Yeah, I noticed that. I wouldn't mind if scrums were reffed like that in general but they're not. If the defending team stood up like that, the attacking team would get a pen.

[Spiffy]

refs have been told not to give scrum penas if the ball can come out or your not going back at a rate of knots

The scrums are still a total mess and the ref seems to have leeway to do what he wants, within or without the laws. e.g. a scrum that is being pushed back does not automatically mean a penalty to the pushing team, provided the pushed team stays straight, does not collapse and does not stand up.Theoretically the pushers could march such a scrum the length of the pitch while holding the ball and it would be legal. In reality, If a scrum yields a few metres in reverse, the ref just gives a penalty to the pushers. Simply being pushed back is no reason for a penalty in the laws of rugby
Penalizing props for collapsing or boring is a pure lottery and most of the time the ref could call it either way. The resulting debateable penalty, if it is kickable, could well be a match winner.
Some of this stuff is hard to spot, but crooked feeding, straight into the second row is not, is the now the norm and is not penalized.
Slow scrums, with endless resets and all kinds of illegality, take up too much of the game time and are ruining rugby.

[Mikey Brown]

refs have been told not to give scrum penas if the ball can come out or your not going back at a rate of knots

The scrums are still a total mess and the ref seems to have leeway to do what he wants, within or without the laws. e.g. a scrum that is being pushed back does not automatically mean a penalty to the pushing team, provided the pushed team stays straight, does not collapse and does not stand up.Theoretically the pushers could march such a scrum the length of the pitch while holding the ball and it would be legal. In reality, If a scrum yields a few metres in reverse, the ref just gives a penalty to the pushers. Simply being pushed back is no reason for a penalty in the laws of rugby
Penalizing props for collapsing or boring is a pure lottery and most of the time the ref could call it either way. The resulting debateable penalty, if it is kickable, could well be a match winner.
Some of this stuff is hard to spot, but crooked feeding, straight into the second row is not, is the now the norm and is not penalized.
Slow scrums, with endless resets and all kinds of illegality, take up too much of the game time and are ruining rugby.

I don’t disagree with any of that I don’t think, but as a response to Scotland hammering Ireland in the final play and Healy popping out of the scrum? Well, I just don’t know when scrum dominance is meant to be rewarded or not because that seemed pretty blatant. Equally I don’t want to spend all day watching reset scrums for minor infringements.

Granted we just would have gotten ourselves isolated and turned over again, so I’m not suggesting it threw the game, but it seemed like another cop out from the ref.

[whatisthejava]

This isnt new

In the 90 grand slam the english had our scrum fucked and the ref gave them two penalties (I think)