Nigel Owens claps back at Matt Williams’ call for World Rugby to depower scrums after ‘masterful’ Springboks performance
Nigel Owens has had his say on the call to 'depower the scrum'...
Former referee Nigel Owens has responded to Matt Williams’ call for World Rugby to further depower the scrum.
The former Leinster coach turned outspoken pundit has repeatedly bemoaned the influence the set-piece as has on the game currently and echoed those sentiments after South Africa’s victory over Ireland on Saturday.
The Springboks dominated the scrums so much so that both Andrew Porter and Paddy McCarthy were sin-binned for repeated infringements.
Williams described South Africa’s 24-13 victory as a ‘masterful performance’, adding that they ‘exploited the laws’ to their advantage to get the most out of their maul, breakdown and scrum prowess.
Williams’ moan
However, the 65-year-old bemoaned the impact that scrum continues to have on matches.
“I feel sorry for referee Carley in many ways but if you go to the lawbook… the scrum is there to restart play, that’s what it says in the lawbook, it was never meant to dominate the game,” Williams said on Off the Ball..
“When I played, and when I started coaching, it wasn’t a penalty to be pushed off the ball. It shouldn’t be a penalty when you’re pushed off the ball, that’s the contest.
“South Africa are the best in the world at that incentive; they get the long arm penalty. When I was playing it was a short arm [free kick].
“If you have a five-metre scrum, you go for a pushover try, no problem at all, that’s a great skill, but that was just horrible. All those people that came to watch that game and on TV, it was a disaster.”
“Not only was it a disaster because you had so much scrummaging and penalties, there were yellow cards coming out from scrummaging, which completely ruined the game. The whole thing cascaded down from that.”
Matt Williams: Springboks performance was ‘masterful’ but World Rugby must depower the scrum
World Rugby have made attempts to limit the influence that scrums have by removing the option for the set piece from free-kicks while also implementing shot clocks in order to limit the amount of time they use up.
Williams claims that the governing body’s board is eager to make more changes to scrums and mauls, but are being blocked by the big nations. This isn’t the first time he has made such a claim as earlier this year he wrote that the ‘oligarchs’ like South Africa do not want their advantage reduced.
Nigel Owens and Bernard Jackman’s replies
He added that until changes are made, we will get more games like the one at the Aviva Stadium, which he says is ‘very boring and frustrating to watch’.
Owens has since taken to social media to respond to Williams’ remarks, stating that if the scrum is depowered even more, it will kill the game.
“Rugby is a game for all shapes and sizes,” he wrote on X.
“Depower the scrum anymore, and you may as well watch a rugby league match. It will destroy the community game if there is no place for your good old-fashioned type of prop.
“Keep meddling with the game, and you will destroy it.”
Former Ireland hooker Bernard Jackman also aired his views, stating that some of the reaction to the match is difficult to take seriously.
“Some of the reactionary punditry to the Springboks awesome display of forward power Saturday is hard to take seriously,” he wrote on X.
“I would hate to see the scrum depowered and the Irish players and coaches will be the same. Just because one team is brilliant in one area, why would you dumb it down rather than everyone strive to get better.”
In his Sunday column, Jackman argued that the Springboks are under no obligation to entertain and hailed Rassie Erasmus’ ‘ultimate flex’ of replacing both his starting props just before half-time, which led to a penalty try.
