La Rochelle : Atonio, touché au genou, forfait pour le Tournoi ?

“It’s not fair, waa, waa. Scrums and other things that need to be changed to suit the North”.

If I were to apply your logic I’d deduce that, because most referees are from the Northern Hemisphere. And since these refs aren’t capable of reffing complex laws, we should (a) have less NH refs because (b) they’re dumb.

Further, as a corollary conclusion, the Northern Hemisphere clearly doesn’t understand scrums hence they can’t scrum. Indeed it’s a new mystery to the North. Accordingly and therefore they want to interfere with the scrum to suit themselves. And you’re biased because you’re from the North. Possibly an agent. Of world rugby. (You do work for them). Run by the North. And the Freemasons.

Just get better at scrums. Simple guys.

Discuss.

So far the data we are relying on is the opinions of armchair critics, mostly on social media and mainstream media who add to the confusion. These opinions are open to bias.

Further, I think world rugby does have this data as teams are able to submit queries to Match officials post match and I’m pretty sure unjust scrum penalties would be highlighted.

My opinion is that I believe the number of scrum penalties being awarded (7/18 from your article for example) isn’t bad for the game.

And that a small fraction of those penalties could be found to be erroneous. Hardly enough to get excited about.

And Argentina should shorten their anthem. It takes way too long for the beat to drop.

Stop. Wasting. Time!

Kpoku has far more potential than either of them.

Thats about as far as I’d go in terms of meddling with penalties being awarded for scrums. Perhaps this will force teams to scrum better and play attacking rugby from scrums. But as I write this I don’t like it.

The decision to alter the game should be based on stats.

In the final Test he Boks took scrums instead of lineouts as you could in those days under the law and there were over 60 scrums in the game, none of which ended in penalty.

It gave the Boks a decisive advantage in attack from scrums and wore the ABs down.

I'll deal with the last bit. Many coaches/observeres complain now that it is impossible to cash in on the advanatges of fatigue because the size and strength of benches make it impossible.

By stopping the clock when the ball is no longer 'live' [in all situations not just scrum] you extend meaningful time in the game and make Fatigue an issue once more. No coincidence that the South African method works best with low Ball in Play time!