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Here we are again. The scrum – the defining feature of rugby union as a sport – has once again been mismanaged to the point where players, fans and referees have no idea what to expect one week to the next. Round 4 of the Champions Cup saw ludicrous scenes of dominant scrums going unrewarded and front row battles killed dead by befuddled officials who have been sold down the river by their superiors.
How did we get here? It all started in super rugby, where in a mad scramble to slash ‘dead time’ in games (and then add it back in via the childish golden point rule… but that’s another story) the scrum contest was essentially removed from the game. We saw teams with 100% scrum success after half a dozen games – a ludicrous statistic that can only be achieved by referees protecting weaker scrums. So long as the ball gets to the number 8’s feet, anything that happens in front of them can be ignored. The irony was that the Super Rugby title was won via penalty kicks earned via scrum penalties.
This way of think soon spread across the world – the URC quickly followed suit, as did the international scenes. Australia finished 2025 with a remarkable 1 scrum loss in 100 own feeds. Do the Wallabies have the best scrum in the world? No, of course they don’t, they have been protected by referees just as retreating scrums across the world have been, ever since Super Rugby decided the way to beat NRL was to become more like it.
But wait, there’s one exception: France. This season, the French TOP 14 changed the way it is refereeing scrums with the aim of making it more of a contest – they even want scrum halves to feed the ball down the middle! The results are plain to see in the stats: there are 9 teams in the world with over 20% opposition scrums won – they’re all French. All 14 clubs are in the global top 15 (Leicester Tigers the only intruder). Meanwhile, the bottom 12 teams for own scrums won are also all French.
This is not because French scrums are rubbish – take a look at the behemoth packs roaming the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, these men can clearly push – it is because the scrum is a genuine contest and referees are encouraged to police it as such.
So, fast forward to round 4 of the Champions Cup. Being a tournament run by ECPR and not LNR, the French referees who take charge of games have to change their approach: no more contest, protect the retreating pack. Hence, we see the likes of what happened down in Cape Town. Rather than penalise a Leicester Tigers scrum that was in serious trouble, the French referee advised their front row to ‘accept behind dominated’ – a verbatim quote. If they did this, he said, they would not be penalised. What this meant, however, was that the Stormers pack that was going forwards would not be rewarded either.
Then there’s what we saw in Gloucester: Toulon shoved the cherries into next week at both the scrum and the maul. The home side offered zero resistance to a French eight who might as well have been driving forklift trucks. However, the URC referee refused to reward them. He ordered Toulon to play away from their advancing scrums, forbidding them from keeping the ball in and gaining territory the old-fashioned way.
It is worth labouring this point: by ordering teams to play away from advancing scrums, referees are essentially banning side from using a perfectly legitimate rugby tactic, because their advantage is too great. It’s like banning Cheslin Kolbe from stepping off his right foot or Antoine Dupont from making kick passes. It is invasive and should be totally beyond the remit of a match official.
But then there’s the question of if the referee remembers what they have been told to do in the first place. During the Northampton vs Scarlets game, the French referee frustrated fans as he repeatedly blew hist whistle at scrum time, despite the ball often having been already played away. In his defence, the Scarlets were struggling badly as an early injury to lock Jake Ball left them with a makeshift tight 5, so an offence could well have been committed. However, the contrast between his hardline approach in this game and the selective blindness of the referees in other games was jarring and confusing for fans, coaches and players alike. Some suggested the calls were coming from the touch judge, which would explain the delay in the whistle being blown. If true, this exposes yet another flaw with having different laws in different tournaments: it is not just one referee who has to remember which law book they should be reading from, but their 2 assistants and the TMO too. The odds of one of them getting confused have just quadrupled.
What makes the whole thing even more ironic is that this referee’s interpretation is probably the most correct, but it is made to look wrong by the other referees in the other games protecting the weak scrums. The solution? Simple: treat the scrum as a contest and reward the winner.
Trying to make rugby not about scrums is trying to make Octoberfest not about beer. The current interpretation is a fad that the sport needs to get over.