{"id":791800,"date":"2026-10-04T15:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T15:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/791800\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T15:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T15:46:12","slug":"all-blacks-dave-rennie-calls-for-world-rugby-to-delete-rules-to-avoid-scrum-debacle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/791800\/","title":{"rendered":"All Blacks: Dave Rennie calls for World Rugby to ‘delete rules’ to avoid scrum ‘debacle’"},"content":{"rendered":"

All Blacks boss Dave Rennie has hit out at the Springboks<\/a> scrum yet again and has called on World Rugby to get rid of laws to simplify the set-piece.<\/p>\n

The governing body will host another meeting ahead of the November fixtures of the Nations Championship, where Rennie hopes many of the game\u2019s oddities will be addressed.<\/p>\n

Throughout Rugby\u2019s Greatest Rivalry series, the All Blacks boss hit out at the Springboks\u2019 scrum tactics, accusing the South Africans of \u2018walking around\u2019 in the set-piece.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Dave Rennie frustrated with scrum laws<\/p>\n

Rennie<\/a> believes that the brake foot is problematic as it distracts the officials from other illegalities in the set-piece.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the frustrating part of a game, to be honest. I made mention of it during the series,\u201d the All Blacks<\/a> boss said of the scrum in an interview on Newstalk ZB\u2019s Weekend Sport with Jason Pine.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a meeting about the shape of the game with World Rugby<\/a> and the brake foot was never mentioned, but then all of a sudden it comes in.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an area where I don\u2019t 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, \u2018Oh look, just give me something\u2019. Others are saying, \u2018You got to make sure you have your foot out there\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen what came in is that if you had your foot out there but you didn\u2019t have your heel down, you\u2019re gonna get penalised for that. I\u2019ve got no understanding around the value of that. Supposedly, it\u2019s gonna stop 800 kilos behind you if you have your heel down. And I think it made it harder for the referee.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got a game where I reckon we\u2019re going to delete rules and things out of a game, not add more and so you\u2019ve now got referees trying to see a foot that on the \u2018S\u2019 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Disappointed\u2019 All Blacks are \u2018better\u2019 than the results as Dave Rennie wants New Zealand to \u2018rectify\u2019 their season after Springboks losses<\/a><\/p>\n

Springboks\u2019 illegalities<\/p>\n

Rennie then hit out at Boks\u2019 scrum tactics again; saying: \u201cWe just felt that the South African tightheads are on a 45 (degree angle) immediately, and then they\u2019d walk sideways. It\u2019s 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\u2019re going to keep doing it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what we felt was if they were forced to scrum square, then we can stay in front of that and we won\u2019t have any issues. I thought we scrummed really well in the fourth Test in Baltimore. That\u2019s the challenge we\u2019re sending to World Rugby: let\u2019s simplify things. Let\u2019s give the referees less to think about and look at, and just concentrate on keeping the scrum square.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you do that, then the team that\u2019s strongest can push through you. I mean, that\u2019s fair enough, but if you\u2019re able to shear across and get rewarded for that, then it\u2019s going to be a debacle at every scrum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dave Rennie: \u2018Springboks are beatable but you\u2019ve got to be at your best\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

World Rugby meeting<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got a meeting this week and then we\u2019ve got a conference when everyone\u2019s up in the UK prior to our first round of Tests,\u201d he replied.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSo I think the Sunday before we play Scotland, we\u2019re all meeting down in London. So there\u2019s definitely a lot of personal interest or self-interest when you go to those meetings and so maybe what\u2019s best for the game isn\u2019t always what happens because teams may feel that it doesn\u2019t benefit them but I think there\u2019s a handful of things that are odd in our game.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe half-backs being able to roll the ball back with their hands, but they\u2019re rolling it back outside the ruck. So that ball\u2019s out the whole time. And you can\u2019t come around and compete for that. In a game where we\u2019re saying we want competition like high ball and you can\u2019t block, but you can\u2019t touch the nine in those situations.<\/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

\u201cSo I just think you shouldn\u2019t 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a few strange things that have come in and been adopted that haven\u2019t really been discussed by all the coaches from nations around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Rennie believes that the All Blacks can compete with South Africa at scrum time.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder the current framework, we definitely can,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE:\u00a0Ben Smith: Springboks \u2018manipulated\u2019 the All Blacks in a part of the game that has become a lot harder than when I was playing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All Blacks boss Dave Rennie has hit out at the Springboks scrum yet again and has called on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[168226,348,3482,134497,620,50,5903,4247,101,56,54,55,31902],"class_list":["post-791800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-dave-rennie","tag-home-page","tag-internationals","tag-nations-championship","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-rugby","tag-south-africa","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-world-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}