Andy Farrell addresses sticky question of Johnny Sexton's age

Well fatigue was actually my first and main point! I just want others to come to that conclusion themselves rather than just feeding it to them lol

I can accept that South Africa have a ball in play stat that correlates with a lower fitness/higher strength team, but I don't necessarily buy the argument that one automatically leads to the other. I'd suspect their two stats (high restart numbers low BIPs) likely have separate causes.

Graham made a great point about crescendos. These are what people call momentum swings these days. The build up in fatigue is a momentum swing. The sweeping of the ball down the field in multiple phases is a momentum swing. What is important is that these are far too easily stopped by fake injuries or timely replacements, and that they can happen regularly enough that extending game time (through stopping the clock) becomes irrelevant. It has always been case that to create fatigue play needs to be continuous. What matters is the Work to Rest ratio exceeding 70 secs and still being consistent at the ends of games.

Qualities in bench changes have a different effect, but as their use has become quite adept over time, not so insignificant changes that they should be ignored, I agree. The main problem however is that teams can't dictate the speed of the game, as in, any team can dictate how slow it becomes if they really want to, but the team in possession (they should even have some capability to keep the pace up when not in possession) are too easily foiled when the want to play with a high tempo.

The your question about stats linked to 'incorrect decisions' I've answered more than once above.

In fact it's based on a neat sidestep of the real issue, which is how to reduce the number of pens for minor technical infringements at scrum-time - parading quite wrongly under the banner of 'dominance'.

So you need a model where only clear & obvious offences are pinged, not one where refs are looking to wriggle out of the straitjacket of resets by making a decision.

Hell, I even looked at having Jonah Lomu on the wing as cheating back then, that's how much of a skew in advantage he was.

BTW, just a couple of other things ive picked up on from your tone, Nick's idea promotes more scrums (ie the slowing down of the game into more of a contest), so you should be happy about that one (trade). The other is just a mundane point that I don't know holds any real value to this discussion, but the ball is obviously lively contested at ruck and maul time, it's not after the ref blows his whistle and the 9 is fu#$ing around spinning the ball on his middle finger however.

No reason you cannot be dominant and still use the ball is there?

As you can see from the screenshot in the article, Oli Jager only get separated from his hooker because Jack Boyle is moving around him and Ronan Kelleher is moving in towards him. It's not worth a pen.

Malherbe examples next article! He was going backwards in at least two of those scrums.

Do you view a scrum differently to every other facet? Why's that? And what would you like the scrum to turn into if you implemented some changes?

What do you mean by just a reset? Like league where the ball is rolled/placed at the 8s feet to play with? I don't agree with any of those crazy suggestions here (even as a reward to the team that wins the scrum, I'm not even sure it would be a reward), no ones talking about depowering the scrum. At least not in this article/instance.

If there is no penalty for being beaten in the scrum we might as well just restart with a tap

To who? The team that was previously in possession? A scrum is a means of contesting for possession after play stops in open field (as apposed to when the ball goes dead, where it's a lineout). Are you proposing that core basis of the game is removed? I think it would make a much better game to just remove the knock on, as someone has already said, scrums resulting in a penalty as punishment for knocking the ball on is ridiculous. If you want to turnover the ball when someone looses it, you simply have to regather it before they do. That's how ever other game I can think of other than League works. So just get rid of the problem at the roots, it would be a much better "drastic" change than removing the contest from restarts.

In the lineout ruck and maul successful competition gets rewarded and illegal competition gets penalised no one is arguing about that. So is the scrum different?

No one is arguing that removal from scrums either. It is the plethora of nothing offences, the judgmental "technical" decisions by a referee, that are in the middle that are being targeted. Of course this is not a unique problem to scrums, lineouts will result in penalties simply from a contact of arms by jumpers, or rucks whenever a play hangs an arm over someones shoulder when cleaning them out. This article is about tackling the 'major' offences hindering the quality of the game.

But other than these questions, if you want to know my main opinions in my post you will see I agree that the ball should need (always and in every type of circumstance) to be played if it is available at scrum time.

Otherwise the TLDR of all my comments (even thoughts in general) on this particular question is that I agree advantage should be had in instances were the team with the ball 'won' the 'advantage' and where some sort of advantage was 'taken' away. In this respect the scrum had to be rolling forward to win an advantage. But I'm flexible in that if it speeds up the game to award a penatly, that's great, but if they also stop the clock for scrums, I'm happy with way instead. That is very few instances by the way, the majority of the time the ball is able to be played however.

The big question I have asked Bull about is what advantage or opportunity was taken away from a strong scrumming team when opposition causes the scrum to collapse? What sort of advantage was taken away that they need to be a penalty reward, that would seem to be way over the top for most offences to me.

So on that point, I'll like your perspective on a couple of things. How do you think lineouts compare to scrums? Do they offer you enough reward for dominance, and do you think all such meaningless offences should be lessoned (slips or pops while going backwards, contact with the jumper, closing the game, good cleanouts to some fool whos ducked his head in a ruck etc)?