When push comes to shove, it is time for scrum action

Chief Sports Writer

Saturday 23 March 2013

THERE is, I'm told, something on the interwebbythingy called YouTube.

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Hugh MacDonald

It is not, dear reader, a site devoted to an assessment of my columns. That, of course, is called It'sMoreACryForHelp.co.uk.

Nope, this YouTube has videos. So what are they? Well, videos are a sort of compilation of moving pictures. YouTube gathers fragments of life that one may consider interesting. Like a cat giving a rendition of the Moonlight Sonata or a dog conducting the Royal Philharmonic. Or, if you are the sports editor, the semi-finals of a Bosnian under-16 table tennis tournament.

Last week, a mate sent me a clip where a referee was officiating at a rugby match with a webcam on his napper. It struck me this was a genuine instance of a ref having his head examined. He romped about the pitch capturing close-ups of people in intense physical situations. Which is not unusual on the interweb, or so the bad boys on the sports desk tell me.Anyway. The purpose of the experiment was hard to divine except, perhaps, that it was an indication of how hard it is to referee a rugby match. But anyone who watched the Six Nations would have known that already.In a couple of matches during the tournament, the sport of rugby was what rarely broke out during a series of refereeing decisions. It was like watching a union dispute going to arbitration.Scotland and England have both complained about the ref in their matches against Wales, surely a coincidence. The English want clarification. This means they want the ref's head on a very sharp stick. The nub of the matter is the scrum. This is the bit in rugby where one nips to the loo or buys wee Louie, my nephew, another portion of chips with the sort of curry sauce that would take the varnish off a skirting board.Unfortunately, the scrums in the Scotland match happened so often that the front rows got to know each other very, very well. The post-match banquet thus doubled as a celebration for a triple civil partnership. And may they live happily ever after. Incidentally, Louie is now morbidly obese but my skirting boards are in smashing nick. Contentment for the rest of us, though, must include a solution to the problem of rugby consisting of one big pushing match, punctuated by toots on a whistle. This is the sort of stuff that may attract a Creative Scotland grant but should not be inflicted on the paying punter at a rugby stadium.Commentators chuckle at the mysteries of the scrum. The rest of us see our Saturday afternoon disappearing into an entertainment file marked Arthur Askey at the Royal Command Performance. It is that bad.The sport has reached such a level of inconsistency in officiating that coaches talk of carrying out "due diligence" on officials as if Craig Whyte was expected to turn up. Thus refs are scouted on what they will tolerate and what they will not and teams draw up a game plan accordingly. The cunning Welsh strategy against Scotland was apparently to sell a dummy at the point of engagement at a scrum. This gave them victory and the rest of us a very dull headache. And the aftertaste of strong curry sauce.It also caused me to suggest that Something Has To Be Done. There are two options: Refs can be taken away and told definitively what must happen before engagement and instruct the little chap with the ball to put it in straight and allow an old-fashioned scrum to develop.The second course of action is to tell the boys in the scrum: "Listen, this is impossible to ref. You are all heaving or lifting or coming in at wrong angles or too soon or both and the little chap is throwing the ball so much to one side a spectator has just picked it up. I surrender. "Let us just have the sort of rugby league set-piece where the players are just pretending to scrum in the way that George Osborne is just playing at being Chancellor."Now there may be someone with a better idea but it all has to be sorted out soon. Otherwise the Six Nations website is going to be renamed It'sMoreACryForHelp.co.uk . . .

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When push comes to shove, it is time for scrum action

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