Chapter Master

In 2013 the 6 Nations hit a historic low point. Only 37 tries were scored across the entire tournament. That is an average of just 2.5 tries per match, the lowest in the professional era. At the same time penalty goals were climbing. Matches were increasingly decided through penalties rather than attacking rugby. In 2013 penalty goals averaged more than 6 per match. At the same time the scrum had slowly become one of the most disruptive parts of the game. Collapses were constant. Resets dragged on. Entire passages of play disappeared into repeated engagements. In one match between Wales and England there were 13 scrums. Eleven of them collapsed. Six were reset. Ten penalties or free kicks were awarded. The ball actually came out of the scrum just three times. Scrums were no longer primarily a platform for attack. They had become a way to manufacture penalties. Teams realised that if they could dominate the scrum they could simply milk penalties and kick goals. The match would move slowly. The scoreboard would tick over through kicks. Tries became less important. When southern hemisphere fans talk about Six Nations rugby being slow or penalty dominant, THIS is what we are talking about. Even the tournament report at the time noted that this was changing the shape of the game. resources.world.rugby/worldrugby/doc… So what changed? In 2013 World Rugby introduced new scrum laws and a new engagement sequence: crouch, bind, set. Before this, scrums involved a large collision. Props would hit each other with enormous force on engagement. That impact often destabilised the scrum immediately and led to collapses. The new law required props to bind onto each other before the engagement. This reduced the collision, stabilised the scrum, and got the ball into play faster. At the same time referees were instructed to deal with repeated collapses more quickly and to reduce endless resets. Several unions played a role in pushing these changes. England had already trialled the new engagement sequence in Premiership rugby and age grade competitions. Their data helped convince World Rugby to introduce the law globally. France supported the move as well, largely because their professional competitions were experiencing the same problems with collapses and scrum penalties. Southern hemisphere unions also supported the shift. New Zealand and Australia had long favoured a faster game with more ball in play. South Africa, through the SANZAAR competitions, had also been involved in testing different approaches to stabilising scrums. This shift began to tilt the balance back toward rugby being played with the ball rather than through the referee’s whistle. Scrums became more stable. The ball came out more often. Matches flowed more naturally. More possession led to more phases, which lead to more attacking opportunities, and slowly the try numbers started to rise again. SO. Any of the conspiracy theorists who have been getting worked up about the latest “State of the Game” event might want to take a breath. The last time rugby adjusted the scrum to reduce resets was in 2013. At the time there was plenty of noise about administrators interfering with the game. Plenty of panic about where it would all lead. Yet that shift toward more stable scrums and fewer resets started a gradual change in how the game was played. Which has now culminated in what many Six Nations fans have described as the greatest championship the tournament has ever produced, and perhaps the greatest game the competition has ever seen. So before everyone panics about the next round of conversations around the “state of the game,” (Yes, I’m looking at you @lequipe) it might be worth remembering what happened the last time rugby made a tweak to the scrum laws. It resulted in the best Northern Hemisphere rugby we’ve ever seen.

Former Wales captain Sam Warburton has named his 2026 Six Nations Team of the Tournament - with three Welsh players included! 🏉 Agree? Disagree? Let us know your thoughts! ⤵️ #BBCRugby