More legato, less staccato. The governing principle of Super Rugby Pacific 2025 at the refereeing ‘audition’ before the season ever started was better flow and connections between passages of play, with fewer stoppages. The symphony of the rugby ‘music’ in the southern hemisphere was about to change for the better.
Unprompted interventions by the TMO were to be limited, and there would be less interference with the acting nine at ruck, maul and scrum, reduced time for goal kicks [60 seconds, down from 90], and uncontested lineouts allowed to proceed even if they were not straight.
SANZAAR claimed that they were all “innovations [which] aim to enhance the flow of the game… while referees will also be empowered to lead decision-making.”
With two knockout rounds yet to come, it looks like somewhere between one and two minutes of total game time may have been saved compared to other competitions around the globe, so it is fair to say the experiment has worked. Broadly speaking.
Perhaps the single most stubbornly resistant aspect of the game remains standing at the gate to freedom, with arms folded and shaking a forbidding finger, and that is the set scrum. Scrums are notorious for creating staccato and ‘eating the clock’ via the time consumed for initial set-up, subsequent resets, free-kicks and penalties. None of those are agreeable to the visionaries who want to create a more fluent and seamless spectacle.
Super Rugby officials have tried their best to minimise the stoppages created by scrums in regular season play by calling ‘play on’ wherever possible. Take a look at the following table illustrating the percentage of penalties currently awarded in the top-tier club/provincial competitions around the world.
The percentage difference between Super Rugby and Top 14 may look relatively insignificant on paper, but in reality it means 400 fewer stoppages, albeit in a domestic season roughly half the duration. There is also a clear rift in refereeing thinking between SRP and the Premiership on one side, and URC and Top 14 on the other, with more scrums and more penalties from them awarded in the latter two competitions. There are two ways of playing the game, two forks in the road towards international rugby.
The importance of scrums in the context of overall success is a constant, however they are refereed.
There is a very lucid correlation between success via qualification to the play-off stages and coming out on the right side of the ledger in terms of scrum penalties. The top six are positive [+53 cumulative] and the bottom five are negative [-53]. Even the points split between the top three and the three teams directly below them in 4-6 is accurately mirrored – +47 versus +6 – while the underachievement of the Queensland Reds and the New South Wales Waratahs over the season is implied: if scrum penalty differential really does reflect overall potential, both franchises could have finished higher in the table than they did.
Queensland head coach and Wallaby supremo-in-waiting Les Kiss all but acknowledged the fact in the aftermath of his side’s crushing 32-12 loss to the Crusaders in Christchurch.
“The game certainly puts you in a despondent mood,” he said. “They punished us. Their set-piece and scrum particularly put us under pressure and we couldn’t adapt quick enough.
“In terms of the season, there are a lot of pleasing things. We have a game that’s compelling when we get it going, maybe the conditions tonight and the set-piece pressure just pushed us off that tonight. We needed to be a bit more direct and earn the front yard before we went out the back.”
Once again, there was a high correlation between scrum success and scoring opportunity. The Reds scored their brace of tries in the same period when they won their only two scrum penalties [67th-76th minutes]. But by then, the Crusaders were 27-0 ahead on the scoreboard and leading 5-0 in scrum penalty countback. As the influential Reds number eight forward Harry Wilson muttered miserably after the event, “We didn’t fire a shot until the last ten minutes”. No scrum, no win.
The Reds may have been missing Matt Faessler at hooker, Alex Hodgman at loose-head prop and young bull Massimo De Lutiis on the other side of the front row, but would their presence really have made such a difference to the set-piece outcomes? All three had started in the 43-19 thumping by the same opponents in round four, after all.
Richie Asiata and Zane Nongorr are an active part of the Wallabies discussion with the British and Irish Lions tour imminent, but the three All Blacks in the red-and-black front row had their measure from the start of proceedings in Christchurch.
The drive is coming straight across the Reds front row from right to left, with the Crusaders promoting their tight-head Fletcher Newell as the spearhead of the home scrum effort. The white hat of second row Josh Canham is already clearly visible as the power ramps up and all three Queenslanders disappear under the pressure. That scrum alone may have done for the chances of Asiata, Nongorr and Canham representing the green-and-gold against the tourists.
It meant a succession of easy exits for the Crusaders and it did not get much better when George Bower replaced Tamaiti Williams on the home loose-head.
Once again, the left side of the front row caves in under acute pressure in the first instance and Canham is caught in a poor pushing position behind them. Replace Newell with either Will Stuart or Tadhg Furlong and it will not get any easier versus the Lions.
Superiority at scrum time has a happy habit of informing other areas of intense physical contact such as the driving lineout and the breakdown, and the Brumbies were in the ascendant in all three aspects against the Hurricanes in the third play-off game of the round. They scored two tries direct from the maul and four tries were shared between their starting front-rankers James Slipper, Allan Alaalatoa and Billy Pollard. All three were going well enough in the scrum to feel very sprightly in the open.
That is no mug manning the Canes’ tight-head, it is currently the best planet rugby has to offer in the shape of All Black incumbent Tyrel Lomax.
Although ‘Triple A’ Alaalatoa didn’t mention the scrum specifically after the game, he did pinpoint the other two areas where scrum superiority permeates.
“The last time we played, we didn’t get many A-zone opportunities [entries to the opposition 22], so we wanted to take as many as we could today, and our A-zone was really good today,” he said.
“It felt good to earn ourselves another week. We knew that it was going to take everything we had physically. We spoke a lot about our tackle area and we knew we had to be good in that area, and it was a much-improved effort from the last time we played them.”
When you’re physically comfortable at scrum-time, you can start to plan your moves without risk, and belief begins to snowball.
Easy, quick ‘channel one’ ball produced between the feet of the number eight and open-side flank generates a one-on-one tackle, and a straightforward bust down the Canes’ 10 channel by Brumbies inside centre David Feliuai.
Referees may have been attempting to minimize the stoppages created by scrums in Super Rugby Pacific, but only one of those [Kiwi Ben O’Keefe] will be handling a Test in the forthcoming Lions series. The other two [Italian Andrea Piardi and Georgian Nika Amashukeli] are products of URC culture and they will police the set-piece far more vigilantly. They will not care about driving ‘the flow of the game’ nearly as much. More staccato, less legato.
The importance of scrums magnifies as ‘the point of no return’ moves closer, and Joe Schmidt will not want a repeat of the third Test in 2013, if push comes to eight-man shove, or a game-defining penalty. That should in turn nudge the Wallabies boss away from the Reds and the Tahs and towards the Brumbies; away from everyone bar Faessler and Angus Bell towards Slipper, Pollard and Alaalatoa – with Tom Hooper and Will Skelton behind them.
The Reds’ campaign ended not with a bang but a whimper, but the boys from Canberra are still hammering away on the heavy bag, making the most of themselves and every shot at the title they get. They are Australia’s sole remaining contenders and Schmidt needs more of the same for the Lions, if the Wallabies are not to enter another hollow valley, and the broken jaw of a lost kingdom.
Mate, you can listen to whichever punter fits in with your narrative all you like and believe what you like. If you really want to believe that they needed their teams and players to leave Super Rugby when they won the World Cup with an inexperienced squad while their provinces and 80% of the XV were still in Super Rugby; that they were becoming more European when Rassie made it clear that they were returning to their own DNA; that Brown didn't have much influence last year; then be my guest.
Obviously I can see the psychological need to big up the European contribution to yet more Southern Hemisphere success so I sympathise with you and want to support you. After all, it's a very long time since an actual European team won the Rugby World Cup 😉
I’ll keep listening to the ‘man in the arena’ [Graham] thanks JD. The culture changed but it needed the departure from SR to do it, the move north and the expansion of selection policy.
That ‘golden generation’ of forwards did not approach their task with the same SR attitudes which had been tried and failed so many times previously. Under Rassie, the emphasis was diametrically opposite.
He has always been careful to keep the Kiwi influence firmly at arm’s length. Select from overseas, leave SR, shift north. And Tony Brown is just one room in a very big Springbok mansion.😉
Nick you mistakenly point to Canham’s head coming up, but that is where it was at the put in. His back is not straight either. Horrid to watch. Reflects poorly on Reds scrum coach.
I was a 6/small 2nd row, but I was taught to set well and was very grateful for it as it paid dividends.
Yes it’s a poor body position which could not offer support to his prop when pressure came on. Godo to hear from you P/S!
Scums are only interesting for me if teams use them to do some attacking back play.
The blues play a NH style of footy and while I live in Auckland and appreciate the wins at long last, it sux to watch.
You just about want to run the poor wingers out a hot chocolate and a woolly hat half the time.
Low percentage play might be safer, but I’d much rather my team use a high skills game looking to move the ball through multiple sets of hands.
Scrums are… well it’s each and to their own I guess.
Godo comeback in the second half of the season though. Bags of character.
Aiden Ross is available for selection for Wallabies now right ? Signed for reds 2 years is he a chance as that 3rd loosehead?
I‘d still take Kailea atm on grounds of age BA, though I doubt Ross would let anyone down.
Nick, I havent looked closely at him, but what is Hooper’s set piece ability like? He certainly has the loose game and his wiki says hes 122kg (which I struggle to believe), but what is his lineout win % and scrum win % as a lock?
Is there a height risk for the lineout there? Someone like Frost is 3 inches taller.
Also would you be selecting a 6-2 bench for the Aussies just to be more physical?
This would be my 8+6 at the moment
1. Bell / Slipper
2. Pollard / Asiata
3. Alaalatoa / Tupou
4. Skelton / Frost
5. Hooper
6. Valetini
7. McReight / Tizzano
8. Wilson / Gleeson
I think Brial is another good shout at this point.
He’s not the linout player Jeremy Williams is as the stats show, but he is reliable.
The key point is that it will not be a choice between him and Will Skelton, but prob him and Harry Wilson at 6.