Paying due homage to the scrummage
COMMENT trained by scrummaging against trees. The Bible was about to be translated into Afrikaans. And in those days you could chose a scrummage ahead of a lineout.
The heroic impertinence of the Force. They had come to Christchurch and they wanted to scrum, scrum, scrum. Mike Cron calls it ‘‘the most combative part of the game’’, and he is right. Go and watch league if you don’t care for this sort of thing. It’s a mini war. The great Welsh hooker bobby Windsor didn’t bind on Graham Price when they played the French because he needed an arm free to fend off the blows coming through from the second row.
The Scrummage:
It makes you wonder how they keep from goin’ under.
Crouchin’ in the the front row, gruntin’ like a tractor,
Dinin’ out on Aussie ribs, make the guy fracture, Crazy low life, livin’ in a scrum, Pushin’ pills and gym weights, til it make my head hum,
Rule by chiropractor, I am the krypton factor
Don’t push me cause I’m close to the edge,
I’m tryin’ not to lose my (tight) head
Sorry about that nonsense, but when you were a weedy back who used to scrum on concrete floors and against metal lockers at school, this stuff gets lyrical. And on and on it went in Christchurch, bashing against the door of the locker, until the Aussies got an edge. ‘‘Civilisations have fallen in the time it has taken this period of play to unfold,’’ declared a rueful Scotty Stevenson, although you could tell he was loving it.
Hoffmann would not penalise Owen Franks, an All Black, you see, although he frequently took a knee to stabilise himself. In the end Hoffmann, correctly, gave Tim Perry a yellow card for standing up.
And the Force thought they had won. But the Crusaders took off Luke Romano, Sam Whitelock went to tight lock and Scott Barrett slotted in beside him. It was a powerful move. The Force went for the victory shove and found themselves running backwards. So what if Wyatt Crockett was in at a ridiculous angle. Needs must. A victory for Whitelock and Barrett. A victory for Tim Bateman packed down on the side. A victory for Christchurch.
It was magnificent. Fred Allen said: ‘‘Champion props, let’s face it, are not quite as other people – but champion props are in many ways the rock on which great Rugby is built.’’
Note the capital ‘R’ in Rugby. And maybe there should be a capital ‘P’ in Prop for great scrummagers like Robert Paparemborde, Gerard Cholley, Richard Loe and Carl Hayman. And an ‘H’, like the goalposts, for all the great hookers who stood between them, like Sean Fitzpatrick and Windsor, the man who the French affectionately called ‘Bobby Rouge’ as ‘‘trois fois’’ they broke his nose.
So to all you beer-barrel men, with broken noses and inflated ears, scrum on until Doomsday and Franks for the memories.