Paying due homage to the scrummage
There were thirteen scrums in the second half of the match between the Crusaders and Force. Thirteen scrums in which time stood still while 16 men strained every sinew for an inch of turf. ‘Thirteen scrums’, it could be the name of a heavy metal band, obliterating your mind with a scream of white noise. But on Saturday night ‘‘thirteen scrums’’ was 15 rugby minutes of primal visceral joy.
If you didn’t love it, then you don’t love rugby. Leave the room now. You’re a popinjay who thinks that rugby is all running and passing. You’re a little green man from another planet who believes in an eternity of recycling. Get out of here and close the door behind you.
This column pays homage to the scrummage. And scrummage it has to be, that long, scrumptious ‘u’ sound, and not the silly, diminutive ‘i’ of the American scrimmage. They should make a TV serial called ‘mudmen’ and set it on the Canterbury Plains. Or perhaps on the fields of France, a nation that reveres ‘le melee’ and gives up two accents to such a short word. The French know about homage.
It was such a brutal start to the second half in Christchurch. The 16 men came to a head and the Crusaders got a surge on. But this Aussie side was not for yielding. They refused to give an inch like a mad general up to his neck in First World War mud. But something had to give. The Force front row buckled in on the tighthead side. The Crusaders marched over the top of the fallen bodies.
And out of the murk came a high pitch howl of pain, Codie Taylor, the Crusaders hooker, said: ‘‘My head was buried in the ground and I could hear him. I couldn’t see him, but I quickly got up and told the ref to stop the game because we knew it was pretty bad.’’
Jermaine Ainsley’s legs were twitching from the pain, like a rabbit with a .22 bullet through its neck. His left elbow was dislocated. Ainsley, the 21-year-old son of former All Blacks prop Joe McDonnell, left the pitch on a cart with a plastic tube in his mouth.
And that could have been an end of it. But in a way it felt like the Force, threatened with extinction, were playing for their lives. ‘‘We’re here to scrum,’’ proclaimed Taylor in the first half to referee Rohan Hoffmann. The Force were scrummaging for their existence and they were doing it in the Crusaders home, the home of the modern-day scrummage in New Zealand.
For 10 glorious minutes in the second half the game turned into scrum warfare. There were plenty of resets but there were also six separate scrums. It reminded you of 1937 when the Springboks won a tour for the only time in New Zealand.
Before the final test at Eden Park, the last time the Boks won on that ground, Paul Roos sent a telegram which read, ‘‘Skrum, skrum, skrum.’’ It was an article of faith.
One member of the pack 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.
"Champion props, let's face it, are not quite as other people." Former All Blacks coach Fred Allen