Good Scrum Article

Is the scrum still a factor?

There was a time when the scrum was the game. It was won by a goal but the road to the goal was the scrum. Then there was a time when it was regarded as essential to winning the game even if there were other ways of doing it. Now it is a troublesome nuisance, but still regarded as an important facet of the game even though reduced in incidence, so reduced that some believe rugby football would be well shot of it.

Getting rid of scrumming or de-powering it in the Rugby League way is anathema to Rugby Union traditionalists and idealists who believe that Rugby Union is a game for all shapes and sizes.

What would they do without scrums - the Franks brothers, Martín Castrogiovanni, Jannie du Plessis, Euan Murray and all the way down through Rugby Union's many layers.

We can take this entertainment thing too far, believing that entertainment comprised solely of running about with the ball. Only a tiny minority of players are involved in Rugby Union's entertainment business that rakes in millions and millions and more for rugby's coffers.

In early days the main players were forwards and their main job was in the scrummage, as it was usually known though it was also called a hot. They had a few outsiders to guard their backs - a fullback, then two half backs, then three quarter-way backs and then four three-quarters. And those fairy folk behind the real men more and more wanted things to do.

The game, when it came to be played on fields as distinct from village to village or house to house, was about scrummages.

In the early days the ball would be put on the ground and the real men would gather around, standing upright ready to close with opponents in their attempts to hack the ball towards the opposition's goal-line. They stood chest to chest, heads up. They would hack at the ball and at each other. Hacking was an art and special boots with reinforced toecaps were designed to inflict as much pain on opposing shins as possible. It died out and, like rucking, was lamented by some.

The first written laws about scrumming, in 1862 by Blackheath, stated: "Though it is lawful to hold a player in a scrummage, this does not include attempts to throttle or strangle, which are totally opposed to the principles of the game."

No hacking, throttling or strangling - a game going soft.

[and much more at ... http://www.rugby365.com/article/5774...till-a-factor]