Quinssa: An Evening with Brian Moore - Part 3
By BatQuin
January 9 2010
Moving away from Bloodgate for a while, we then touched up on ELVs. Why was it that the IRB wouldn’t introduce a measure like rolling subs to try to negate the need to ‘cheat’, but they were quick to try to bugger up [that’s my technical term] the game by introducing a set of new rules. Brian, as I’m sure you’re already aware, wasn’t the greatest fan of Mr O’Neill and his ELVs.
“What was wrong with the game in 2003 – apart from England winning the RWC – that we had to introduce 35 new rules? It’s rubbish. How can you trial them? Trialling them together was stupid.” He suggested that as a scientific experiment it was flawed. If you wanted to root what was making the game ‘boring’ (in the eyes of O’Neill and his cronies), trialling all the ELVs together wasn’t going to give you an answer. He suggested that pride wouldn’t let them back-track. “In Australia RU audiences are gong down but why should we change the rules to help Australia? They can’t prove what has stopped people watching. It’s probably because they weren’t winning. Australians don’t tolerate losers like we do! The ELVs make me angry. Not much does. . .” We all laugh at this point. Brian is not John O’Neill’s greatest fan [who is?] and is of the opinion that you get good games under both (ELV and non-ELV) and you get crap games under both. “I don’t like 35 mini rucks and when the team taking the ball in will get it back 93% of the time. It’s boring. But the ball’s in play longer. So what? And what does ‘attractive’ mean? For example, in the Toulouse game, the biggest reception was for the driving mauls. It might not be as open and flowing as a backs move but the crowd appreciated it. And it’s a fact that the IRB figures show that northern hemisphere referees give 1 penalty less a game than southern hemisphere referees, yet NH referees are supposed to be whistle-happy. What the IRB should do is apply the current laws properly.” Amen to that!
Some fool then mentioned feeding the scrum. Don’t they know that this is Brian’s bête noir – or at least one of them? Anyone who’s listened to Brian’s commentary on the BBC knows that he feels very strongly about this. Apparently the panel of elite referees is aware of it too!
“I’m part of the problem because I keep going on about it. I’m not invited to the Elite Referees’ meetings anymore. During the ‘Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage’ debate I was supposed to be an observer but couldn’t keep my mouth shut. They were going to have Crouch, Touch and Pause, Engage. What? Why would you let props keep hold of each other?” Brian demonstrated how he showed a couple of those elite twerps what could happen if you had two props holding on to each other prior to the ‘engage’. Thankfully that demo seems to have worked and they changed their minds. If Brian hadn’t been there that change would have gone through unchallenged. I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty scary. Are these people barmy? No, don’t answer that!
OK, back to the put-in. Apparently our elite friends (!) reckon that they’ve got too much to watch and that the put-in is the least important. Brian’s view? “Rubbish. You have to look at things consecutively.” He suggests that if you transposed the degree of put-in to the line-out, it’s so crooked that the hooker would be throwing straight to the scrum-half. Funny how a line-out throw has to be straight. Well, OK, it ought to be straight!
He says that the elite referees ask him how many games he’s reffed and his answer is “Quite a few actually.” He told us how at one game the referee asked him to stop trying to referee the game and his retort was “Well, one of us has to.” Having been involved in over 50,000 scrums, it’s pretty clear that Brian knows what happens in a scrum!
“The main problem is the re-sets. No-one knows what’s going on [Chris White anyone??]. If the ball is straight you can hook, so one side wants a stable platform. The law says that you’re only supposed to push when the ball is in, so with the ball not straight, you have two packs pushing at the same time. The binding is important on the hit.” Brian gave us a demonstration of hooking the ball. He said that the scrum had to be stable for the hooker to stand on one leg and hook with his other. Seems to me, and I’m certainly no expert in the dark arts of the front row, that if the ball was put in straight, then it would be fairly obvious – even to Chris White – that if the scrum was collapsing, then it would surely be the fault of the defending side. Brian would just like them to give it a go. “Because I’m saying it and it sounds simplistic, they don’t believe it’s the case, so I say to them ‘try it’”. He says the consequences of the current scrummaging methods are serious because what we have are power scrums: hit/push; hit/push, and that people are retiring early because their bodies can’t take it.
I don’t think this is the last we’ll hear of the put-in.If you do not already have an account Click here to Register.
Quote:Some fool then mentioned feeding the scrum.
Sorry!
