Gerry McLoughlin: Most people haven't got a clue what happens in a scrum, but I'll tell you. Back then, I never passed on any knowledge to anyone, not even my own brother, in case they might get the better of me. Every scrum I ever went into, I set the agenda. I had to make sure the rest of them were as focused as me, especially the back-row forwards. I mean, somebody had to make sure that the importance of the scrum was fully understood. As props, our heads were on the block. Nobody blames the back row if the scrum goes back.
It's a war, right? You're trying to break people in two and stop them from breathing. You're trying to put his head in his chest so he's thinking about other things. A man is only as strong as his weakest point. So you take him at his weakest point â€" the top of his head, the pole. That takes experience, a lot of technique and a lot of trickery. You've got to make sure you fool the referee, distract his attention.
You're thinking, thinking, thinking position. It's not about speed into the scrum, it's about picking your spot. And the best position hurts you. The blood is rushing to your head. You're in a pain zone. But you know the other guy is suffering more. He can't breathe. He can't support his neck. You know he's going to crack, you can feel the weakness coming. And then he gives. Half an inch is all you need. You know you have him, there's no way back for him. He splits out from his second row. He's got no one behind him and you drive through him.
Gary Knight (AB prop): I used to be a wrestler. It's a sport that sets you up well for playing in the front row, that one-on-one element. I liked to keep low to the ground, that's the way I scrummaged. You've got to keep the other guy low, but never let him go to the ground. If he does that, you've failed. It's all about keeping him low and sustaining that pressure until he reaches breaking point.
Gerry McLoughlin: The first scrum happened in the first minute, over on the far side of the pitch. It was our ball. That meant more pressure. It meant we were expected to win it. You'd prefer their ball first off, because it gives you a chance to get into it. You've got eight guys pushing against seven.
Practically everyone I knew in Limerick was there, scattered all over the ground, or sitting on the wall on the far side, looking down on that scrum, waiting to see what was going to happen. That was the moment of truth for me â€" the All Black Test prop pushing against me on our ball. In the front row, it's easy to be confident if you know you're good enough. But when you scrummage a guy for the first time, especially somebody with Gary Knight's reputation, you never know what you're up against until you feel the pressure and you find out what he's got, what his technique is. After a few seconds, you can tell and so can he. You know if you're going to do a job on him, or if he's going to do a job on you.
We went down and straight away I knew I was going to be able to scrummage as I wanted. I knew I wasn't going to have a problem with Gary Knight. Jesus Christ, it was a huge boost to get in the first minute of the match. I'm not saying he was a bad scrummager. All I'm saying is I could handle him.
Les (White) [other Munster prop] was doing a job for us. He was a decent player and I had a good bond with him. So I'm thinking, "We're going to be fine here", when next thing the pressure comes through on the tighthead side, they start driving forward and Les gets shoved backwards. That came as a shock to me. The angle was right getting in. We were set. The wheel was ready, but it was a slow heel. You could have said Pa Whelan didn't hook the ball fast enough. But then again, far be it for me to blame the hooker. Because you wouldn't know what hookers would be up to.
Tom Kiernan, Munster coach: First we missed the catch from the kick-off, then we lost the first scrum badly. I was sitting in the stand, alongside the selectors. And I'm a bad man to watch a match, always was. I can't help myself. I'll say, "Why did he do that? Why didn't he do the other thing?"
Gerry McLoughlin: Second scrum, we had to hold them. We had to set out our stall. We had learned our lesson from the first one. I knew I had the measure of my man â€" I wasn't going to be driven around the place. That meant I could be more accommodating to Les on the other side of the scrum.
Les White: I was 34 and I'd never been an international, so this was it for me, the biggest match of my life. That's the way I was looking at it. I wasn't six feet tall and six feet wide with no neck, so I had to have technique. And playing in that Munster front row was hard. Whelan would have us driving a scrummaging machine up against a brick wall in training. He was aggressive then, but when he came up against real opposition â€" when the first contact was about to be made â€" he would go mad. I can't recall his exact words. Let's just say he was a great exponent of the F-word.
Gerry McLoughlin: The push came on and they couldn't budge us. Some people were surprised by that, but they shouldn't have been. I was the guy doing 200 scrums a night at Shannon, not Gary Knight. Why should he be the one to budge me? Just because he was wearing a black jersey? It didn't work like that.
Brendan Foley, Munster lock: Locky never lacked faith in his own scrummaging ability. He was a fair prop, no doubt about it. It didn't matter if he was playing for Shannon, for Ireland or the Lions. He nearly got us killed in South Africa once. He gave an interview the day before a Test match. We were short of four or five of our best players and they had a massive pack. He told the newspaper reporter that he reckoned we'd take the Springboks up front, that they were weak in the scrum.
Gerry McLoughlin: Fifteen minutes into the game, there's a stupid knock-on, scrum to us virtually on their line. And for the front-row forwards, this was a big scrum, the biggest of the match. If they were any good â€" if they were as good as people said they were â€" they were going to drive us off that ball. People watching a match see a scrum on the line and they think, "They're putting everything into this, everything they've got in the tank." But it doesn't work like that, not with me. I could never lift the tempo on my own line or on their line â€" it would be the same throughout the whole field. Every single scrum was important and that meant you got the feel then. He should have been down trying to drive me back in that scrum, but he didn't do it. I was able to get under him. I was comfortable and I wasn't going back one inch.
Gary Knight: We couldn't budge them. We were cleaned out. Their tails were up. That's all there was to it. When you're the All Blacks, wherever you go to play it's a big deal. You know that for a lot of those players it's the most important game of the year. Sometimes it means more. Sometimes it's the biggest game of their lifetime. To me, it felt like that's what we were up against.
Gerry McLoughlin: We knew after that scrum. We just knew. We thought, "If they can't do it there, they're not going to do it anywhere."[/b]
