RUGBY FOOTBALL

Hokitika Guardian, 6 December 1928, Page 7

RUGBY FOOTBALL

SEVEN-FORWARD SCRUMMAGE

LONDON. October 16

A writer in The Field says that the Now Zealand Rugby team which toured South Africa is credited with expressions indicative of a somewhat shaken faith in the traditional seven-forward sc rummage form at i on. “Lt is not to be expected, in fact, that the New Zealanders really will abandon the formation which they have made distinctively their own,” the writer goes on to say, “and which they introduced to Rugby players in this country 23 years ago, when the first representative team came over under David Gallagher.

“'Flic principal appears to be logical and simple enough; and in practice very few teams outside New Zealand have been able to apply it with sufficient success to encourage preseverance. There is one hypothesis which is admitted even by the New Zealanders. This is that the seven forwards need to be carefully chosen for their build and physical abilities to fill particular places in the scrummage, and they must lie very good players at that. All experience has shown that this is a vital factor. Both of the New Zealand teams of 1905 and 1924, which visited this country, were blessed with forwards who were remarkable fine players, and might well have triumphed independent of the seven-forward formation ; generally, our forwards were beaten simply because they were not such good players. The New Zealand team which has recently been to South Africa was said to he one of the-strong-est the Dominion had ever produced; but it happened that South Africa, which has turned out many fine forwards. was strong enough in that phase of the game to provide an opposition which the New Zealanders failed to break.

EXPERIMENTS IN ENGLAND. “Among the many clubs in this country whiclrexperimented with the New Zealand formation after the 1905 tour, T/eicestcr is now perhaps the chief adherent to it, and the club lias not been able to show conclusively that it owes much of its success to its preseverance with the system, which depends almost as much on the clever maiiipulaion ol the eight backs as on the strength of the forwards. But it is possible that other clubs may yet lie inclined to give the system another trial, if only as an alternative in the development of wingforward play. At present many packs consist to all intents and purposes of only seven real scrummagcrs owing to the activities of the winger, and it might conceivably be an advantage in these cases to reorganise the scrummage on the New Zealand system. Still, when all is said and done, plans are one thing, and putting them into practice quite another in which the opposition have an unfortunate habit of taking part,”