Interview with RFU Referee Boss

Sadly I don't have a link to the full interview due to being at work but two interesting points he mentioned.

- He claims there are no problems with the current scrum laws of referees application of them.

- He suggests that the biggest problem with current laws is that they encourage defenses to try set up mauls and not rucks.

Do you feel he is right? Or is he out of touch.

Is he right? No

Is he out of touch? Yes

I have heard lots of people complain about scrums and I have heard no one complain about the number of mauls.

The attacking team should want to set up a maul as it allows them the chance to retain fairly secure ball and keep going forward.

A player running into an opposition player and getting held up isn't really a maul as such, it's just a mess and he should rightly have the ball turned over.

The problem with scrums are that teams prefer to concede the penalty rather than getting shunted back 10m and then giving the opposition pristine ball or a penalty anyway, just further back. There needs to be harsher punishments to teams that refuse to scrummage properly and that means refs more readily going to the pocket or under the sticks. Zero tolerance should be brought in. Five or so reset scrum as one team continually gives away penalties in order to stop the opposition scoring is ridiculous, go between the sticks after the second. Same with yellow cards, if a prop refuses to scrummage legally at the first scrum and then does the same thing again at the second get him off. Repeat offence, yellow card, come back when you want to scrum properly. This should be accompanied with the RFU hiring ex-international front rowers to school top level refs, Julian White is retiring soon he'd be prefect.

A player running into an opposition player and getting held up isn't really a maul as such, it's just a mess and he should rightly have the ball turned over..

A professional player should a) be able to position the ball better in contact and b) have support. Players who run into contact minus support and with the ball held incorrectly have no sympathy from me (e.g. Hape vs Ireland).