Smartcooky, I don't pretend to know what's going on in scrums, I just express pretty consistently that something is wrong and the hit in particular needs to be removed.
Well for mine, the hit is unnecessary, and actually causes more problems than it solves, so I would be quite happy to get back to having no hit at all, and just have the two front rows come together and get the scrum stable before ball is put in. This seems to be what the iRB are working their way back to.
► No pushing or trying to out muscle for opponent until the ball is in
► The ball is not to be put in until the scrum is square and stable
► The ball must be put in straight so that the hookers have to hook the ball.
Now I'm not asking for ramrod straight. For me, the test for straightness was always
"would the ball have clearly rolled out of the far end of the tunnel if it wasn't hooked". If not, then the ball wasn't put in straight, and it is very clear to me that most put ins at international level are nothing like straight, and often directly into the second row.
If you make the ball be put in straight, then you force the hookers to hook the ball, and you take some of the prop's focus away from getting the better of his opposite, and more toward supporting his hooker so that he can get a decent strike.
...which international props are the most illegal in their technique? To me, Cian Healy's improvement at scrum time seems to be largely down to his complete neglect of binding correctly. I can't really fault him since if ref don't pick up on it, he'd be crazy not to continue doing something that works for him.
To some extent, all international props bind illegally, although that is changing. I think I have seen more PK's for illegal binding in the last two years than for a long time before.
While Healy's binding may be illegal, he is a loosehead prop, which means he can't bind on the arm of his opponent anyway (a lucy's arm has to pass inside the tighthead's arm - Law 20.3).
Looseheads trying to do stuff illegally generally try to bind under their tighthead opponent (on the collar or chest) so that they can turn inwards and try to make the tighthead uncomfortable by jamming his head against the hooker's head; this technique is called "boring in". It may be that you think Healy is not binding at all because his arm is inside the scrum and out of sight.
IMO, the greatest recidivist offenders among international props as far as not binding correctly, and then using that illegality to disrupt their opponents are Martin Castrogiovanni, Adam Jones, Ben Alexander and Owen Franks. The French prop Nicolas Mas also earns (dis)honourable mention.
Now why I consider correct binding to be so important, is that in a correctly bound scrum, the two props form an arch over the tunnel. Any architectural design student will tell you that an arch is one of the strongest shapes you can make. If it is correctly keyed at the top, it will support itself, and wont collapse.
NOTE: The THP binding here is marginal. I would prefer his hand be up near the yellow dot.
It is well understood that a bent arm is much stronger than a straight arm. If you don't believe this, try lifting the heaviest weight you can with a bent arm, and see if you can still lift it when your arm is dead straight. You won't be able to. Now consider how we want the props to bind. If we allow them to bind illegally on their opponent's arm, chest or collar, they are doing so with a the "stronger" bent arm, which gives them power to push and pull in any direction, especially, in directions that will promote collapse. However, if we make them bind straight, this weakens their bind arm in the "disruption directions", and allows them strength only in the direction we want, which is pulling the opponent towards them, and this will lock the top of the arch together and keep the scrum from collapsing.
I firmly believe that if referees insisted on legal binding as a "no deviation" prerequisite,
before the ball was put in, i.e. the ball is not put in until the scrum is square and stable, and the props are correctly bound, then the number of resets and collapsed scrums would be drastically reduced.
