We were certainly shown the importance of the number three jersey in a rugby international today!!
The tight head is the cornerstone and anchor of the scrum.
Dislodge that cornerstone, and you dislodge the whole scrum.
The Boks are scrumming with a faulty anchor.
We can no longer ignore the facts, and the sooner we accept that this is the problem, the sooner we can fix the problem.
Some of us have been warning for weeks now that our scrumming will lose us an important game unless we pay real attention to sorting out our technical weakness.
The Bok coach needs to take responsibility and ensure that John Smit is given the very best technical coaching available immediately.
After all, he is arguable the best Bok captain of all time and nobody enjoys seeing him being beaten at scrum time, no matter how much the coach or player attempt to play the problem down or shift the blame.
HERE IS THE GOOD NEWS
It is not difficult to fix!!
With some small technical adjustment John Smit will still go on to be a competent tight head at international level.
LET’S GET TECHNICAL
It is vitally important that the tight head scrums at as low a level as possible and gets quick downward pressure onto the loose head.
Smitty is scrumming far too high in many scrums as a result of his body position after the hit.
The problem starts in the position of his legs directly after the hit, as they tend to be too close to a vertical position under his body, and as a result he cannot get his hips down low enough in order to transfer power through his legs and back into his shoulders and onto the loose head.
The result of this is that the loose head is able to get underneath him and shove him up and inwards totally destroying the Bok front row and also eventually forcing Bismarck up into the air.
Tight heads will tell you that the worst part about this is that you reach a point of no return where you are at the total mercy and embarrassment of the opposition loose head.
Smitty needs to make a quick adjustment to his legs immediately after the hit, getting them back so that his hips are lowered and the real power in his legs can be transferred through his body so that he can use his right shoulder and neck to pressurize the opposing loose head with his full force.
I am certain that he can achieve this, and to his credit he has now learnt how difficult it is to face a short loose head if you are not technically correct in every scrum, and allow the loose head to get underneath you.
Thanks TIGHT HEAD !
You’re a JAN !!
Yo tight head, and right on time too, thx!
Will read later, after the games.
Well written Tighthead. We need to fix this problem. JS is our best captain ever and we need him. But the scrum needs to be sorted out.
This is what happens when you play a hooker and an 8thman at prop.
Very true TH. JS should captain from hooker. He is a great leader, but you have to play specialists in international games. You can get away with such selections for a few games, but it doesn’t take long for the opposition to pounce on the soft underbelly of any team with a weakness.
The Boks were well off the pace today. Particularly at forward where the Ozzies were far hungrier and desperate.
the most telling problems for me though was the lack of quality in our back 3.
Pienaar adds exactly zilch at fullback.Francois Steyn’s huge punts where badly missed this week….and thoughts of not selecting him for the boks because he plays overseas are laughable.
Odwa is an average wing and I’m still convinced that twakkie got the names mixed up and ment to select Akona.
Jacobs is a limited impact player given the current dynamic.
all in all…a very dissappointing performance. Brussow has been glaringly off the pace the past 2 weekends.
“”The problem starts in the position of his legs directly after the hit, as they tend to be too close to a vertical position under his body””
Can this be due to him playing hooker for such a long time? Hooker does not have the same body and leg position during the hit as the props, do they? He is always more vertical?
PS. I know nothing about front row stuff. That is why I am asking.
Intelligent comments Tighthead. Positioning of legs is key to transferring power through the back, shoulders & neck. They enable you to get lower body position. Although it is a balancing act. Too low & you’re in trouble, too high & you’re also in trouble as we see with Smit.
I’m not sure Smit is built to handle a shorter loosehead prop. How flexible is he? Whether on the loosehead or tighthead, I played both, it was a joy when your opponent was taller, especially at loose head. Nothing like lifting a tighthead out of his boots. 🙂
Having a strong scrummager behind you like Bakkies can actually be a disadvantage to the TH, strange as it sounds, & advantage to the LH. If the LH is in the right position there is only one way for the TH to go who is caught in a vice – up above the scrum!! 🙂
@JimT –
Exactly Jim.
You comment as somebody who has played there.
Your remark about the tight head in the vice is spot on.
Nothing more embarrasing then reaching that “point of no return” and knowing that the loose head will take full advantage with no mercy.
I don’t know if you saw the Bulls game yesterday, but Werner Kruger had the longest 80 minutes of his life.
You know, when the silent thought in your head is, ” not another scrum “
9@tight head – Agree TH, I remember from my days at TH that go low for flow was the game. Once you go up there is no stop at all.
@tight head – Ha, ha, I like that Tighthead “not another scrum”. That happened to me once against a guy, a Cambridge U. Blue who came down to play for Richmond, a London club. I still remember his name after all these many years J.J. Rainforth. He really worked me over. It was very early in my career playing at an elite level. I trudged from scrum to scrum, my legs feeling like jelly, dreading the next scrum. The worst thing was that I felt defeated mentally. I was convinced that day this was the end of my career, that I could not play at that level. Fortunately it proved not to be the case. I never experienced that again. But for years, even to this day, I agonised over what had gone wrong. Was it me, was it the lack of shove from the lock behind me or was my opponent that good? Regrettably I never got the chance to play against Rainforth again, he just disappeared from the rugby scene, went off bob sledding as I recall. I would have given anything to take another shot & test myself against him. But it was not to be. A valuable lesson though, you don’t forget those days. 🙁
Good insight here Tighthead, we need to get it to Smitty!
Good points TH, all spot on. I used to play hooker in my playing days and was by no stretch of the immagination the best scrumming hooker around. As the hooker one of my jobs was to controls the hit and the scrum dynamic. The most important job for me, that got drilled into me by the coaches, was to get my props to go as low as possible.
When we failed in this, our scrum was crap, but, when we succeeded we were immovable.
The only thing that worries me is the fact that Smitty should know what to do when this happens. Surely he can not be that dof!
tighthead
well written article.
hmmm, maybe i should just pop in at voldy’s and paste your article there? (just to show them how it should be done??):wink:
by the way
i enjoyed your article of last week and it helped gving me some insight when i watched this weekend’s game. can you perhaps in a follow-up article concentrate on the tight-five exclusively (binding position before going into the scrum vs position where your props, locks should end up after contact etc etc)
14@AB –
think its a problem with the way we train …. not sure though, maybe tighthead can give some insight here.
remember the ab in ’96 making their own scrummachine whilst “touring” here?
if i remember correctly, that scrummachine was much lower than the average ones.
does anyone know what happened to it (think they left it at the school they trained at) and isnt that one way (by using something similar) to ensure that we scrum lower than what we are doing at the moment?
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