{"id":761290,"date":"2026-06-26T09:47:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T09:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/761290\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T09:47:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T09:47:23","slug":"springboks-have-revolutionised-the-scrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/761290\/","title":{"rendered":"Springboks have revolutionised the scrum"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Wallabies star Angus Bell believes that the Springboks have revolutionised the use of the bench in the modern game as well as the scrum.<\/p>\n

The 25-year-old loosehead prop is gearing up for the 2026 international season with Australia<\/a> after enjoying a playing sabbatical stint at Irish club Ulster for the 2025\/26 European season.<\/p>\n

Bell helped the side reach the Challenge Cup Final, ultimately falling to a defeat to Montpellier, and finished ninth overall in the URC standings \u2013 missing out on a play-off position.<\/p>\n

His stint with Ulster meant that he was exposed to opposition from South Africa<\/a>, Italy, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, with the front-rower stating that he learnt a lot from his time in Belfast.<\/p>\n

Super Rugby Pacific versus United Rugby Championship<\/p>\n

Bell<\/a> believes that the game is largely being played in the same way globally at the moment, but there is a real difference in the importance placed on the scrum.<\/p>\n

\u201cI need to talk from a scrum perspective, because I feel like everywhere around the planet, it\u2019s pretty similar in the shape and speed of the game,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very tidy in Super Rugby, whereas in the URC, you\u2019ve got South Africa, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. There are different pitches every week, so I guess that was part of the challenge, and part of the exciting factor about it is that I didn\u2019t have to wait for the internationals to sort of get that picture. Internationals, it is very tidy too, so it was just a really cool experience to be able to verse people that I wouldn\u2019t have versed if I didn\u2019t make that decision to go overseas.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it was definitely heaps of learnings in there, and as a squad, the whole of Ulster we were pretty young front-row, pretty young forward pack, so to hopefully experience new things with them and try to get everyone on the same page. It was an awesome experience as someone who was actually one of the older players in the forward pack.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wallabies: Why Joe Schmidt should \u2018take one for the team\u2019 and \u2018follow Dave Rennie\u2019s lead\u2019 as All Blacks squad assessed<\/a><\/p>\n

South Africa revolutionising the scrum<\/p>\n

Commenting on the South Africans in particular, Bell says that the Springboks and SA clubs have revolutionised the scrums and the use of benches in the modern game. The Bomb Squad has become synonymous with Rassie Erasmus\u2019 Springboks, and the URC teams have largely copied the template with 6-2 bench splits and a reliance on forward dominance.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time you come up against a South African scrum, to sort of not manage but to attack those sort of teams,\u201d Bell said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgain, that\u2019s why South African rugby has been so strong; they have sort of revolutionised the use of bench front-rowers and the scrum as like a real rock and foundation of where they build their game around \u2013 their maul too.<\/p>\n

Want more from Planet Rugby? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a> for world-class coverage you can trust.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a cool experience [playing the South Africans]; they\u2019re obviously the tougher games. Our last game against the South African team was against the Stormers, and we drew with them on the bell \u2013 they scored in the corner with a penalty try. So, it was just awesome just to experience something different, but it\u2019s the week-to-week challenges that are really different, similar to what Test match rugby is: you versus different nations week-to-week.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always just shifting your mentality to get ready for those different challenges and different front-rowers and who they\u2019re going to pick. It was definitely different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wallabies squad: Winners and losers including Joe Schmidt\u2019s most \u2018significant snub\u2019 as brawler recruited to fill Will Skelton\u2019s \u2018gigantic void\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Juarno Augustus is still on Springboks\u2019 radar as Rassie Erasmus \u2018hopes\u2019 he will debut soon<\/a><\/p>\n

New experience<\/p>\n

Another new experience for the Wallabies prop was the different grounds that he played on, with Ulster\u2019s home surface featuring a 4G pitch. It\u2019s a common occurrence in the northern hemisphere because of the weather and something that Bell had to adjust to.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt my first scrum session at Ulster, I had to really change my shape because you can\u2019t be too extended or anything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it definitely is different, but because of the weather in Ulster, it\u2019s probably a good idea they had a 4G pitch. It\u2019s not too different, to be honest.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe swapped in and out of mud pitches to grass to 4G throughout the year; you kind of get used to it, so in the end I got used to it, which was good.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE:\u00a0Latest World Rugby rankings: Springboks lead the way ahead of Nations Championship<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wallabies star Angus Bell believes that the Springboks have revolutionised the use of the bench in the modern…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":761291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[57077,64,63,818,1182,44,760,1183,85],"class_list":["post-761290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-angus-bell","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-home-page","tag-internationals","tag-news","tag-rugby","tag-south-africa","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=761290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/761291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}