Ewan McKenzie Slams Lack of Scrum Contests in Rugby Championship
Former Wallabies head coach Ewan McKenzie has voiced strong concern over what he sees as the disappearance of meaningful scrum battles in the Rugby Championship.
Speaking on the Rugby Unity podcast alongside fellow ex-Wallabies boss Eddie Jones, McKenzie argued that referees, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, are ignoring infringements and refusing to reset scrums, leaving dominant teams unrewarded.
‘No Reward for a Dominant Scrum’
McKenzie pointed to a recent clash involving the All Blacks and Argentina as an example.
“There was a scrum where Argentina went backwards, and then they collapsed it, and the referee just said, ‘Play the ball,’ so the All Blacks drove on their own put-in, drove Argentina backwards, so they’re looking for a penalty, obviously, that’s the norm, that’s how the European referees have officiated it. But no, they drive Argentina backwards; it collapses, it should have been a penalty, and you get nothing,” McKenzie said.
He warned that if referees continue down this path, the scrum could lose all value.
“There’s no reward for having a dominant scrum; you may as well start putting back rowers in the front row like they did in the schoolboy football 20 years ago. That’s what we are getting to because there’s no contest.”
Eddie Jones: ‘It’s Becoming the Norm’
Japan head coach Eddie Jones supported McKenzie’s criticism, saying referees were being influenced by World Rugby’s evaluation system, which grades them partly on how many scrum resets occur during a match.
“What we’re seeing becoming the norm at the moment, and again, it’s crept into the game, is taking the contest out of the scrum,” Jones said, referencing his own side’s Test against Wales.
He added that referees often avoid awarding penalties in scrums to reduce difficult adjudications.
“So you’re seeing that more and more, and they definitely get marked on the number of resets they have, so they don’t want to have resets. They just get the play going again and get the ball away quickly.”
Jones also compared the situation to how referees now handle deliberate knock-ons, saying that once an interpretation trend takes hold, it quickly becomes standard practice even if it detracts from the spectacle.
‘It Detracts From the Point of Scrummaging’
McKenzie went further, arguing that the failure to reward scrum dominance undermines the role of players who specialise in set-piece power — particularly for teams like the Springboks.
“Well, it just detracts from the point of having different bodies, shapes and sizes. There are guys out there that look like they’re there to scrum and provide some sort of technical expertise in that area, but if the scrum is just allowed to tent peg… In the South Africa game, every time it just collapsed in, so there was no reward,”McKenzie said.
He noted that while South Africa secured one penalty from a second shove, subsequent scrums were simply allowed to collapse with no sanctions.
“So you wouldn’t know who the dominant scrum was because the scrum never happened, the ball just went in and out, but there was no contest.”
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The post “The scrum contest is just gone”: Ewan McKenzie Slams Lack of Scrum Contests in Rugby Championship appeared first on iHarare News.
