Former Ireland coach Eddie O’Sullivan has given his verdict on seeing Leinster’s all-international front row getting taken to the cleaners last weekend in South Africa.
Andy Farrell’s Ireland are set to host the Springboks at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium on November 21, a year after he despairingly watched his team’s scrum get demolished.
The Irish conceded six scrum penalties, a penalty try and had two props, Andrew Porter and Paddy McCarthy, yellow-carded for set-piece infringements, and concern over a possible repeat has arisen following the troubling performance of the Leinster front row last Saturday in Durban.
Despite fielding a seasoned Test-level front row in Porter, Ronan Kelleher and Thomas Clarkson, Leinster conceded eight scrum penalties, two free-kicks and had Clarkson yellow carded in their 26-20 defeat to a Sharks team with Thomas du Toit and Vincent Koch as its starting props and Ox Nche on the bench.
“They are almost unbeatable…”
The damage inflicted had Irish fans wondering what Ireland head coach Farrell would have thought about the situation ahead of next month’s Test match versus the double reigning world champions, and it was a question posed to ex-Ireland boss Eddie O’Sullivan on the Indo Sport podcast.
“Well, it’s a worry for Andy Farrell, but to be fair, it’s a worry for every other country,” O’Sullivan began. “The South African scrum and the South African power game at the moment are dominating international rugby. They are almost unbeatable in a sense that they have this much power.
“Now, any one day over 80 minutes, you can get them maybe if you get your ducks in a row and things go well for you, but they are so hard to beat. Looking at the New Zealand series, those four games, and I was at the game in Baltimore, New Zealand just couldn’t live with them physically.
“The New Zealand scrum was under immense pressure all through all four Tests to the point where they really just tried to get the ball in and out of the scrum, so this is not an Irish problem.
“South Africa are incredibly dominant at the moment, and they’re dominant in their own kind of genre because South Africa has always been a country that has relied on physical domination in rugby. That is their kind of MO; that’s how they play.
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“They are historically big physical teams, and they take you to the woodshed physically and then they wear you out, and Springboks’ scrum is just frightening to watch. It is a problem for Ireland looking down in the autumn, but it’s also a problem for World Rugby because they are starting to dominate the game based on their physicality and their power.”
O’Sullivan went on to point out that it wasn’t only Leinster who had a troubled Irish scrum in last weekend’s United Rugby Championship, referencing the difficulty encountered by Connacht in their match at Benetton.
“It’s a big problem for everybody, and you saw another taste now at the provincial level when they’re taking Leinster to the woodshed in the scrum. It’s interesting; Connacht got beaten up in the scrum as well Friday night by Benetton.
“So, going back to our problem, it’s a worry certainly for Andy Farrell that the scrum is getting beaten so badly. But I suppose that’s just South Africa. When it comes to other teams, how would we fare against them?
“We are in much better shape against other teams, but everyone’s in trouble against South Africa, and there’s no sign of it changing, just the way they’re producing players down there. They have the depth, they have the power, they have the strength and their game is currently based on this capacity to overpower you up front or in the carry.
“And then they have a sprinkling of players across their line. Every South African team is a sprinkling of players who are lightning quick, with brilliant feet and if they get an edge, they will skin you.
“It’s a fairly simple formula but incredibly effective and extremely difficult to contain. You might do it on one day, but if you do it three or four days in a row, it’s a hell of a job.”
O’Sullivan went on to suggest that France were perhaps the only country that could challenge South Africa at the scrum. “It’s a power game, and there’s not much you can do about it, and they do put huge pride in their set-piece.
“Several years ago, Argentina were the team when it came to the scrum… Now France are probably one of the only teams that can probably put it up to South Africa, but again that’s a debate at the moment because South Africa have jumped a level again now; you can see it across the board.
“Can you do much about it? When you play South Africa, one of the most important things is to keep the scrums to a minimum. The problem with scrummaging against a team who are dominant, it’s not the end of the world on your ball because you’re in control of the possession, so you put it in and you get it out quickly, and you saw New Zealand do that all the time in that four-match series, in and out, gone.
“That was the only thing you could do. You saw Connacht do it against Benetton and it’s the only solution. You get the ball in and out in the scrum as quickly as you can. You hope by the time your team is going backwards, the number eight’s gone with it.
“But the problem arises when they have the put-in because they decide when the ball comes out, and that’s when you’re really in trouble because that scrum is going to be as long as they decide it’s going to be.
“And again, going back to the Connacht game, they won that game based on surviving six scrums on the goal line in that middle part of the second half and they broke out and got a breakaway try to win the game.
“The scrum is still a very dominant aspect of the game. World Rugby have tried to change the laws to try to control it. A lot of it’s been around safety, which is fine, but the engagement now, they can’t do any more with it. They can’t change the engagement anymore.
“The referees are telling you when to join, when to go in; there’s no big hit anymore. World Rugby has tried to depower the scrum as much as they can. They have tried to get less scrums in the game.
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“Like, there are no scrums on a free kick anymore. They changed the law on being held up over the goal line. It’s not a scrum anymore; it’s a goal line dropout.
“World Rugby are worried about the dominance of the scrum in the game. And for that reason, every law change is almost taking scrums out of the game, there should be less and less scrums.
“The final thing I’d say on it is the other problem they have now is the length of time it takes to put down the scrum. Like you could be watching 30 to 45 seconds for a scrum to engage and then there’s a reset, so it’s eating up playing time out of the game.
“So the scrum is a problem probably for everybody except South Africa at the moment, but they can’t change it anymore. But looking at the World Cup, South Africa are going to build their game for another World Cup around the scrum and the set-piece, and that’s the power they have. That’s not going to change.
“But, as I said at the beginning, it’s not just an Irish problem; it’s a problem for everybody when it comes to South Africa. They just have that power and nobody at the moment can really match them.
“Maybe on the day France can. France have always been an incredibly powerful scrum side, but really, you have to say that this is in some ways a problem for World Rugby because they don’t want the scrum to dominate the game, and when you get to that, where the scrum is dominating the game, it’s not good for the game.
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“The other problem with it is those scrum penalties totally become a yellow card, so it’s not just you’re giving up penalties; suddenly you’re down to 14 men.
“The scrum is really a very important part of the game, which is what World Rugby always wanted – that’s the irony of it. They never wanted to depower the scrum; they never wanted to take the scrum out of the game. It’s a striking feature.
“If you’re just a Martian that flew in for the day and you saw a game of rugby, the most striking feature of the game of rugby is the scrum. Two sets of eight go together, the ball is fed in and you can compete for it.
“What defines rugby is the scrum in many, many ways, even though it’s a multi-faceted game, but World Rugby have been trying to manage that as it doesn’t dominate the game, but it does become front and centre if one or two teams in the world can dominate teams to the point where it changes the complexion of the game dramatically.”