Referees Take Their Place as the 13th Team at the Nations Championship
The world's top rugby referees have a place in this month's Nations Championship, and on Monday they spent the day learning how to get the scrum right. According to The Guardian, the group is being treated as the 13th team in the tournament.
The officials met on Monday 2 November in a first-floor conference room at a hotel near Windsor. Karl Dickson, Luke Pearce, Angus Gardner, Ben O'Keefe and Hollie Davidson were among those in the room.
The session was led by Jonathan Humphreys, a former Wales captain who now works as World Rugby's scrum consultant. The scrum is the set piece where two teams of eight forwards bind together and push against each other to restart play. The three forwards at the very front are the front row, and they carry most of the weight.
Humphreys explained that the loosehead prop, the front-row forward on one side, must not tuck his inside shoulder in before the two packs meet. Doing so skews the angle of the front row. Warren Gatland, the former British & Irish Lions head coach who now works as a World Rugby coaching consultant, showed the correct position by binding onto Humphreys with his shoulders back.
The officials were also given a series of checks to make before each scrum. Front-rowers should line up temple to temple, with no heads resting on shoulders before the engagement. The hooker, the player in the middle of the front row, plants a foot to brace against the push. If the heel of that front foot is not flat on the ground, the referee should award a free-kick to the other team.
Why such detail? Much of it comes down to safety. World Rugby uses a four-part mantra to guide the game: protect the player, embrace the contest, promote continuity, win the fan. Scrums that collapse or rise up unevenly put players at risk and stop the game from flowing, so getting the set-up right serves more than one of those goals.
The officials will have plenty of work to do once the tournament starts. Sixteen referees from nine nations will take charge of 18 Nations Championship matches in the northern hemisphere series, played from 6 to 21 November, according to World Rugby. The Nations Championship is a new biennial tournament created by Six Nations Rugby and SANZAAR, the body that runs southern hemisphere rugby.
Luke Pearce will referee the first test of the inaugural tournament. Hollie Davidson will become the first Scottish referee to take charge of 50 tests, a milestone World Rugby has highlighted. For the officials, the scrum briefing is a reminder that the rules on paper only work when every front row sets up the same way.
