Jason Ryan: 'We got some reward for staying square and going forward'

All Blacks assistant coach Jason Ryan said his side has learnt the lessons at scrum time from Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry, showing clear improvement against Scotland in the Nations Championship.

Ryan’s forward pack muscled up against Scotland’s pack at Murrayfield to win several scrum penalties, a stark contrast to the four-Test Springboks series.

The scrum battle between the Springboks and the All Blacks was the biggest talking point throughout the thrilling series, but the All Blacks assistant believes they have gained plenty from the challenge.

Dave Rennie’s side scrummed for penalties against Scotland, forcing the hosts to backpedal on a few occasions. Ryan, speaking to reporters at their Bath base on Monday, admitted he was happy with the work of his forward pack.

“Yeah, it has [pleased him]. We’ve worked extremely hard on that. I think we’ve taken on some lessons there,” Ryan explained.

“I thought it was officiated extremely well. We got some reward for staying square and going forward. But we still have got to be better.”

The long-time forwards coach also praised Scott Barrett’s strength and the impact that hard work at training has had on this group of front rowers.

“Yeah, all props make props. If they’re scrummaging against the best, they’ll get better themselves, and I think that’s what we’ve sort of created in the last couple of years.

“They’re still pretty young, to be honest. They’re all sort of early mid–20s, and that’s exciting. Ethan de Groot scrummages really well, as does Fletcher Newell, and that’s the reward of the other boys setting them up during the week.

“But I think that’s probably a little bit of confidence that’s come through with having Scott Barrett back and him and Fabian, who have really turned on the revs with our loose forwards, our whole back five group.

“So it all has reasoning for that.”

Ryan believes that there’s an important balance between getting the ball out of the scrum to launch a strike play, and keeping the ball at the back to maintain forward momentum.

“Yeah, I think probably the one that we scored when Jordie threw that pass on; if that had stayed in the scrum a little longer, it actually could have gone 50-50.

“So the balance of when you play off the back and front row boys not getting too excited about this is what we want to do. It’s got to complement the whole game.

“I think it’s similar to the lineout specials. One sets up the other effectively, so the balance is important, but also you could feel that we had their scrum under pressure and the boys wanted to stay there for a bit.”