All Blacks boss Dave Rennie has hit out at the Springboks scrum yet again and has called on World Rugby to get rid of laws to simplify the set-piece.
The governing body will host another meeting ahead of the November fixtures of the Nations Championship, where Rennie hopes many of the game’s oddities will be addressed.
Throughout Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series, the All Blacks boss hit out at the Springboks’ scrum tactics, accusing the South Africans of ‘walking around’ in the set-piece.
He has doubled down on the criticism and hit out at the introduction of the brake foot, which was introduced in 2024 and requires a hooker to keep one foot extended forward in the middle of the scrum tunnel to stabilise the set-piece and reduce axial loading.
Dave Rennie frustrated with scrum laws
Rennie believes that the brake foot is problematic as it distracts the officials from other illegalities in the set-piece.
“It’s the frustrating part of a game, to be honest. I made mention of it during the series,” the All Blacks boss said of the scrum in an interview on Newstalk ZB’s Weekend Sport with Jason Pine.
“There was a meeting about the shape of the game with World Rugby and the brake foot was never mentioned, but then all of a sudden it comes in.
“It’s an area where I don’t believe the referees were fully committed to it either and so we just got different messages in the changing room before every Test in July. So some might be saying, ‘Oh look, just give me something’. Others are saying, ‘You got to make sure you have your foot out there’.
“Then what came in is that if you had your foot out there but you didn’t have your heel down, you’re gonna get penalised for that. I’ve got no understanding around the value of that. Supposedly, it’s gonna stop 800 kilos behind you if you have your heel down. And I think it made it harder for the referee.
“We’ve got a game where I reckon we’re going to delete rules and things out of a game, not add more and so you’ve now got referees trying to see a foot that on the ‘S’ of set can be dragged back but the heel has to be down, so the referee can invariably only see one of those feet because the nine is blocking the path on some sides. So then they are missing the obvious angles, the obvious elbows.”
Springboks’ illegalities
Rennie then hit out at Boks’ scrum tactics again; saying: “We just felt that the South African tightheads are on a 45 (degree angle) immediately, and then they’d walk sideways. It’s really hard for our loosehead to stay in front of a tighthead who is shearing in. So if you have got scrums that are going sideways, and if they get rewarded for that, they are smart; they’re going to keep doing it.
“So what we felt was if they were forced to scrum square, then we can stay in front of that and we won’t have any issues. I thought we scrummed really well in the fourth Test in Baltimore. That’s the challenge we’re sending to World Rugby: let’s simplify things. Let’s give the referees less to think about and look at, and just concentrate on keeping the scrum square.
“If you do that, then the team that’s strongest can push through you. I mean, that’s fair enough, but if you’re able to shear across and get rewarded for that, then it’s going to be a debacle at every scrum.”
Dave Rennie: ‘Springboks are beatable but you’ve got to be at your best’
World Rugby meeting
Asked whether he expected clarity about the scrum before the World Cup, Rennie revealed that there would be a meeting before the November Nations Championship matches.
“We’ve got a meeting this week and then we’ve got a conference when everyone’s up in the UK prior to our first round of Tests,” he replied.
“So I think the Sunday before we play Scotland, we’re all meeting down in London. So there’s definitely a lot of personal interest or self-interest when you go to those meetings and so maybe what’s best for the game isn’t always what happens because teams may feel that it doesn’t benefit them but I think there’s a handful of things that are odd in our game.
“The half-backs being able to roll the ball back with their hands, but they’re rolling it back outside the ruck. So that ball’s out the whole time. And you can’t come around and compete for that. In a game where we’re saying we want competition like high ball and you can’t block, but you can’t touch the nine in those situations.
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“So I just think you shouldn’t be able to put your hands on a ruck because you get penalised for that normally. There should be five seconds to kick a ball. You shouldn’t be able to bring more numbers into a ruck once the ruck has been set because that just slows the game down and then makes it more difficult to apply pressure to a nine.
“There are a few strange things that have come in and been adopted that haven’t really been discussed by all the coaches from nations around the world.”
Still, Rennie believes that the All Blacks can compete with South Africa at scrum time.
“Under the current framework, we definitely can,” he said.
“It depends on the referee on the day. We will keep sending clips and, as I said before, if I force the scrum square, then you can stay in front of them and then we can definitely be competitive.”