English front row scrummaging, can somebody please explain ?

This is just something I observed on Saturday, and me and my farther had quite the debate about it, but I could not help but notice that Dylan Hartley popped up/ stood up at every scrum that was played. Now I always thought that when a player performed such an act, it was because he cannot handle the pressure being put on himself and thus a penalty should be awarded. But as he went unpunished for this tactic for the entire game my farther insisted that it is not necessarily the players fault and that with the scrum "area" being such a mess the ref should just get the ball in and out as soon as possible to deter the countless re-sets. But when I asked the question of how can the opposition push when the opposing player is standing up is response was, I'd just rather see the ball come out and not start again, and as my farther is of the age when he thinks that he is never wrong, could somebody please put one of us right so we do not spend the whole match on Saturday going over the same topic

We saw this a lot last season particularly from Northampton Saints. In most cases if one front row goes up so does the other, and the referee generally tends to give any benefit of the doubt to the team going forward at the time.

Saints won a lot of penalties last season from getting an initial shove on and then taking the scrum up so it looked like opposition hooker had stood up. Perhaps this is a plan that England are now trying to use as well.

LDCPete, but do you agree with me or my old man, should Dylan Hartley be punished or should the ref just let keeping it go as to just get the scrum over and done with ?

My personal view is that if the scrum goes up and the ball is immediately available at the 8's feet and they play immediately then fine.

However, when as we saw the front row go up and the battle continues with he ball not coming out, then the referee either needs to reset or award a penalty against whichever team he thinks have infringed in the front row.

It depends whether hes being forced up by an oppoosition player driving him upwards, which is illegal, in that case the opposition player should be penalised. If hes popping up because hes under legal pressure then yes he should be penalised.
Bear in mind that if hes popped up hes no longer able to drive the scrum forwards, so if his side are winning it would be disadvantageous form him to be doing it deliberatly.
Quite what is causing it to happen so often with Hartley Im not sure, but theres obviously a technique hes using that is either causin the opposition hooker or prop to push him up and out or he is illegaly delibertaly driving over the opposition front row due to his height.
According to the strict letter of the law the ref should blow the scrum dead regardless of wether hes seen a penalty or not once the front row has stood up or collapsed, but more often or not if it looks like the balkl could come ouyt cleanly they let this slide.

The Hartley standing up issue can up big time from Blues fans in last years HC, noone ever came up with a fully adequate explantion other than if they were Welsh assuming he must be doing something illegal or if they were English assuming he wasnt.
The fact ALL refs arent penalising him when he stands suggests to me that hes eithr Richie Mccaw or doing things that are accepted.

Hartley should be punished if he stands up irrelevant of whether he is going forwards or not. It was less Hartley and more Tonga'hia at Saints last season, as soon as he felt the scrum stop going forward he would stand up.

Not sure if that was happening on Saturday though. Bennet was popping up a fair bit as well. It's more likely that the scrum was degenerating into a free for all because the ref was doing nothing to make the props push straight or keep it up. On more than one occasion the Welsh front three either dropped or stood up as soon as the ball was hooked back to stop the scrum from moving. For Haskell's try Stevens was pushing diagonally across the Welsh front row so the scrum would wheel round. Mr Walsh seemed to miss all of the above or didn't care as long as the ball came out on the attacking side (he did pretty much the same at the ruck).

LDCpete, so you are on both side's of the fence then

England's scrum was very much in control so I doubt Hartley was being 'popped up' due to Welsh pressure. There wasn't any Welsh pressure.

Maybe he just wanted to have a look around and guide the scrum forward like a captain at the wheel of a ship.

SafeAsMilk wrote:England's scrum was very much in control so I doubt Hartley was being 'popped up' due to Welsh pressure. There wasn't any Welsh pressure.

The argument is that the reason scrums (England or Saints) with Hartley at hooker are winning is partly because he uses a technique that leads to him being driven opver...rather than horiozontaly into the oppossing front row...and as a result he stands up. If so then he sghould be penalised.
It seems though that the refs see nothing wrong in either what hes doing or the opposition front row causing him to pop up.

If hes simply disengaging regardless of pressure to wave to his mum in the crowd then he shoudl be poenalised for doing that but it would be seen as an odd thing to do.

Sam I disagree that he shoudl be penalised regardless, you have to assess what the cause of him coiming up is. Same as when a player goes down.
The way refs have to think about this is : Was it a legal action that forced him up? Penalty on him. Was it his choice to stand up needlesly ? penalty on him. Was it illegal action by the opposition that caused him to stand up ? Penalty on opposition. Was it totaly unclear because noone really has a clue what goes on in scrums and noone ever drives staright and the ref cant see in the middle anyway? Either guess, make up a rule and penalise someone for it, or let it slide and just hope the ball comes out quickly.

Peter Seabiscuit Wheeler wrote:
The way refs have to think about this is : Was it a legal action that forced him up? Penalty on him. Was it his choice to stand up needlesly ? penalty on him. Was it illegal action by the opposition that caused him to stand up ? Penalty on opposition. Was it totaly unclear because noone really has a clue what goes on in scrums and noone ever drives staright and the ref cant see in the middle anyway? Either guess, make up a rule and penalise someone for it, or let it slide and just hope the ball comes out quickly.

Spot on, and as a rule I would say the SH refs follow the let it slide and hope it comes out quickly approach, and the NH refs jump between that and guessing/making something up.

The scrum is a mess right now, and hopefully after the World Cup the IRB will be looking at it and sorting things out as it is a part of the game that I love dearly.

Sam I disagree that he shoudl be penalised regardless, you have to assess what the cause of him coiming up is. Same as when a player goes down.

Sorry my point isn't very clear. I was refering to him getting away with standing up whilst going forward as a way to stop the opposition counter scrummaging. Sadly the refs tend to penalise the defending team or the team going backwards often ignoring whether it was their fault the scrum became illegal. I agree that referees should be looking at the more technical aspects of what is going on.

So we all agree then, I am right and my farther is wrong !!! Although I could have the rule book in front of me and he will still argue that he is right and everybody else is wrong

There are no rules in rugby, only laws.

*father

formerly known as Sam wrote:There are no rules in rugby, only laws.

And interpretations and standard refereeing practises

I expect the entire debacle only eventuated out of the silly southern hemisphere referee who was too busy being interested in getting the ball into the back lines so he could ignore some forward passes and look on blankly as players flew off their feet at rucks, to be interested in getting the real important technical aspects of rugby correct for 80 minutes.

TheGreyGhost wrote:I expect the entire debacle only eventuated out of the silly southern hemisphere referee who was too busy being interested in getting the ball into the back lines so he could ignore some forward passes and look on blankly as players flew off their feet at rucks, to be interested in getting the real important technical aspects of rugby correct for 80 minutes.

Well lets not forget that Hartley was born in the same country as Richie Mccaw...

I expect the entire debacle only eventuated out of the silly southern hemisphere referee who was too busy being interested in getting the ball into the back lines so he could ignore some forward passes and look on blankly as players flew off their feet at rucks, to be interested in getting the real important technical aspects of rugby correct for 80 minutes.

Pretty much spot on there GG. Walsh really did have an appalling game, the best you can say for him was that he was consistant.

formerly known as Sam wrote:

I expect the entire debacle only eventuated out of the silly southern hemisphere referee who was too busy being interested in getting the ball into the back lines so he could ignore some forward passes and look on blankly as players flew off their feet at rucks, to be interested in getting the real important technical aspects of rugby correct for 80 minutes.

Pretty much spot on there GG. Walsh really did have an appalling game, the best you can say for him was that he was consistant.

True that, he was consistently poor to both sides, so I can't even blame the ref

munkian wrote:

formerly known as Sam wrote:

I expect the entire debacle only eventuated out of the silly southern hemisphere referee who was too busy being interested in getting the ball into the back lines so he could ignore some forward passes and look on blankly as players flew off their feet at rucks, to be interested in getting the real important technical aspects of rugby correct for 80 minutes.

Pretty much spot on there GG. Walsh really did have an appalling game, the best you can say for him was that he was consistant.

True that, he was consistently poor to both sides, so I can't even blame the ref

Still he did manage to go one better then the ref for the NZ v Oz game and spot a knock on... Wait Wilkinson knocked on? Oh well at least he wore the right shirt i guess, and didn't choke on his whistle...

To be honest I have resisted from blaming the ref as us Welsh always get accused of using the ref as an excuse but to be fair we should have beaten that England side Saturday with any ref.

i did not see the game, but if he didnt penalise Hartley every time he stood up then good on him, And every sensible rugby enthusiast whether player or supporter should congrtulate him for contributing to the flow of the game.

To be fair if the game needs referees to crack down on something, it should be penalising Englishmen for going off their feet rather than standing up.

LDCPete wrote:

Peter Seabiscuit Wheeler wrote:
The way refs have to think about this is : Was it a legal action that forced him up? Penalty on him. Was it his choice to stand up needlesly ? penalty on him. Was it illegal action by the opposition that caused him to stand up ? Penalty on opposition. Was it totaly unclear because noone really has a clue what goes on in scrums and noone ever drives staright and the ref cant see in the middle anyway? Either guess, make up a rule and penalise someone for it, or let it slide and just hope the ball comes out quickly.

Spot on, and as a rule I would say the SH refs follow the let it slide and hope it comes out quickly approach, and the NH refs jump between that and guessing/making something up.

The scrum is a mess right now, and hopefully after the World Cup the IRB will be looking at it and sorting things out as it is a part of the game that I love dearly.

As Pete and others have already noted, this standing up seemed to be a 'trick' that Saints were using last year as a way of somehow 'conning' the ref into awarding penalties against the oppo - I hope that it doesn't continue to appear at int'l level

TheGreyGhost wrote:To be fair if the game needs referees to crack down on something, it should be penalising Englishmen for going off their feet rather than standing up.

Well if your lot would stop tackling us we wouldnt fall over so much. Can we work together on this one?

You're going to have to look to your neighbours in Wales for help with that one.