Speaking after the 33-26 defeat at DHL Stadium on Saturday, the All Blacks head coach praised Angus Gardner’s handling of the scrum and then said the Springboks were still going through his tightheads. Rassie Erasmus had answered him an hour earlier. REVIEW: Saturday 29 August.
Five metres out, a few minutes before half-time, Rassie Erasmus sent on a fresh hooker and a fresh loosehead. South Africa won the scrum penalty almost immediately. Off the next one, Siya Kolisi went over, and a three-point lead was ten by the break.
Dave Rennie had spent the week trying to make that passage of play impossible. He took the complaint to World Rugby before this Test, he got the referee he wanted, and by his own account he got the square mark he asked for. Then he lost by seven and said it again, harder.
Nothing about the Springbok scrum walking around was settled by eighty minutes of evidence.
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He asked for a square mark. He got one.
The question was narrow. One scrum, just before half-time, the one where Malcolm Marx and Ox Nché came on.
Rennie’s first instinct was to credit the referee.
“The scrums were better tonight. I think Angus was pretty strong around setting a mark and then trying to keep the hookers in the same sort of spacing, and if the [Springboks] moved across further left then he stopped them.”
Which is exactly the intervention the All Blacks had asked for. Keep the two hookers level and the tunnel stays square until the ball goes in. A pack shuffling sideways off the mark gets stopped. Gardner did it, and Rennie said so unprompted on the night he lost.
Then, in the same answer, this.
“It’s still a bit of an issue for us, ’cause they’re able to walk around and go straight through our tightheads.”
The complaint about the Springbok scrum walking around moved
Put it beside Thursday.
“We think if they’re forced to scrum square and not be able to step sideways and walk around us, then we’ll be able to stay in front of that.”
Not the same complaint.
Thursday’s was about the set. Force them square and the problem disappears. Saturday’s accepts that the set was policed and says the problem arrived anyway, at a different address.
A crooked mark is visible from row Z. The direction of force is visible to almost nobody, and that is what Rennie is now asking a referee to police, at ground level, with sixteen men moving in front of him.
Read also: the All Blacks pack was rushing the engagement at Ellis Park rather than being out-muscled, which is the version of this argument that puts the fix in New Zealand’s own front row.
Erasmus had already answered it, an hour earlier
The Springboks head coach went first, and he was not in a forgiving mood.
“It’s the first time ever in history that people are talking about us walking around… The first six scrums in New Zealand, I had every single one collapsed and it was reset, reset, reset, reset. So why is it only on their ball that the scrum collapsed every single time? So I don’t come with that nonsense.”
Then seven words that will outlive the match.
“We’re not walking around. We’re scrumming through.”
He knew which twenty seconds would be circulating by midnight. So he asked the room not to use them.
“…if you’re only going to clip the part I said now at the end, it’s going to be a hell of a headline, but please don’t do it. Put the whole thing, what I’m answering.”
That is as close as a coach gets to writing his own headline. And the whole thing, the part that did not travel, is not about scrummaging at all.
“Don’t try and convince the people through the media, because that was what happened in the first week. They tried to convince the people in the media we’re slowing the game down, and we’re not. So if the referees get caught up by that, then there’s obviously a plan to get that message out, and then we’re not going to stay quiet.”
Rennie filed a submission to World Rugby and then discussed it in public. Erasmus is calling that a campaign, aimed at the official rather than at the scrum.
“One person’s walking around, the other person’s straight”
The best explanation came from neither coach.
Thomas du Toit, the Springbok tighthead who started this match, was asked about the submission at a media session on Thursday and gave the answer both camps should have stopped at, reported by Simon Borchardt of SA Rugby magazine.
“There are always two sides to the coin. One person sees one thing, one person sees another thing. So one person’s walking around as the other person’s straight.”
He is right, and the reason he is right is the whole argument.
A scrum’s middle line is not painted on the grass. It travels with the scrum. Drive through the loosehead side and the defending tighthead carries the lot on his outside shoulder: hold the feet and it registers as a straight shove, give ground and step across and the scrum turns around him. Same eight men, same drive, two different words for it depending on where you are standing.
The footage is identical. Both descriptions are accurate. One is measured against the field, the other against the scrum, and only the referee’s version counts.
Which is why a square mark solved nothing. Gardner squared the set-up and the load still went where South Africa wanted it once the ball was in. The law has nothing to say about that. No clause against wheeling a scrum on purpose, only against pushing anything other than straight.
What to watch at the first scrum at FNB
The third Test is at FNB Stadium on Saturday 5 September, and the whistle belongs to Nika Amashukeli, who was appointed to Cape Town before illness forced the swap with Gardner. Every submission both camps have filed starts again with a new official.
There is a scrum tell, and it takes four seconds. Watch the two hookers’ heads at the set: level means the mark is square. Then watch the All Blacks tighthead’s outside foot as the ball leaves the scrum-half’s hands. Backwards and across instead of forwards, and the scrum is already turning before the ball reaches the number eight.
That is the honest position after two Tests. Rennie has described it from outside, Erasmus from inside, and neither man is lying. The reason why the set piece remains South Africa’s most reliable Test advantage has not changed in a decade.
Read next: the New Zealand player marks from the same 80 minutes, including the front row picked to win this scrum argument and withdrawn en masse by the 53rd minute.
Frequently asked
Is the Springbok scrum walking around against the laws of rugby?
No. The senior laws contain no clause prohibiting a team from wheeling the scrum deliberately; that prohibition exists only in the Under-19 variations. Law 19.19 requires players to push “straight and parallel to the ground”, and Law 19.34(c) orders a reset once a scrum is wheeled through more than 90 degrees.
What did Dave Rennie say after the second Test?
At the post-match press conference in Cape Town on Saturday 29 August he praised referee Angus Gardner for setting a square mark, then said the Springboks were “able to walk around and go straight through our tightheads.”
How did Rassie Erasmus respond?
In his own press conference an hour earlier he rejected it outright, asked why the scrums had collapsed only on New Zealand’s put-in, and said: “We’re not walking around. We’re scrumming through.”
Dave Rennie was speaking at the All Blacks post-match press conference in Cape Town on Saturday 29 August, and Rassie Erasmus at the Springboks press conference the same evening. Thomas du Toit’s comments were reported by Simon Borchardt of SA Rugby magazine on Thursday 27 August. Law references from World Rugby’s Law 19. Match detail from the allblacks.com live blog and the RugbyPass match feed.
Your turn
Two ways to read Saturday night. Either the All Blacks got the intervention they asked for, watched it change nothing, and have a real grievance about something the law does not cover. Or a beaten pack is hunting a rule to fix a problem that lives in its own tighthead side.
The quotes are above, and so is the moment that produced ten points. Pick one.
