What tyou do noeed is a scum workshop for refs. They need to learn the basics of scrum reffing.

In order of importance:
1) Penalise players who drop teh bind. When your arm is above your head, you cant wiggle your sjhoulders and drop teh srrum. This is non negotiable. Hands on floor is dropping teh bind. Immediate penalty.
2) Assuming no binds dropped, you can start looking for bent backs. Bent back the only way to drop the scrum if bound (although more chance of prop hurting himself).
3) Assuming 1 and 2 true, look for hips above shoulders. You have to push downwards to drop the scrum if you cant wiggle shoulders or bend back. This would be a last resort to drop teh scrum, as you will be limitedalready is limited as you cannot push down very hard.
4) Boring in – this should come last and is an obvious one to spot. If this is there, it overrides 1, 2 and 3 and is an immediate penalty.

Ref’s dont seem to understand that the first three requirements are in order. They will often penalise a player for a bent back when the opposing player has his hand on the ground and is ******** himn around with a low shoulder for example.

ah, the English. You gotta love them. Noone else can quite turn a 13-pt home loss around and make it sound like a rousing victory. Lap.

must have been the jetlag, I was a mere few hours off the flight from Heathrow. What other answer could I have to thinking about G10 ?!

truly, that whole Bok Test frontrow were embarrassing that day, to a man. Bismarck doing his cocked-fist routine to a defenceless player on his back, you know the games up at that stage. I lost count of how many ‘bloodbins’ Smit took (aka ‘breathers’).

mores the pity, my father-in-law bought my daughter a Crusaders top and now she wont take the bloody thing off. Like a blunt poke in the eye to a Highlanders fan.

@grant10: is this breaking news? doesn’t seem like the type to leave home.

clearly we didnt watch the same game. In Hamilton, DCs comeback vs Boks, AB pack were minced in 1stH, and yet DC nearly stole the match singlehandedly in the 2ndH, giving the pack some momentum – changing the focus of the game entirely – and with 1 last kick was a fingertip away from a victory for the ABs.

Far more better examples the previous year when DC was the best player on the park in 1st 2 Tests with McCaw out and the pack completely shorn of experience after the post-RWC defections. He was stunning in beating the Boks in Weiington, but far more so in Dunedin where the Boks won despite the Blacks being down to the bare bones in the pack and almost played the Wallabies on his own in the defeat in Sydney.

Wilko only plays well behind a dominant pack and is badly exposed behind a poor one. Youve had 2 consecutive seasons to figure that one out, mores the pity that joke has finally come to an end.

But then I do seem to recall you basing an entire argument about DC being “soft vs France in Cardiff” despite him being injured off the entire 2ndH. And then turning around and excusing Wilko and others for years of poor form on the basis of injury (see Armitage above/elsewhere).

Wilko makes breaks for Toulon all the time. Here’s one of his tries for example, youtube.com/watch?v=grcvKskeFJI

You have hit on a jey point however, we need to sort our pack out before the RWC.

Hold on, didn’t they actually try and do that for Hayman.

Hold on, but that is exactly what is happening.

A pity Woodward is not doing Andrew’s job to give Johnno a bit of guidance, and someone get rid of Brian Smith.

Hayman is King, long live the King.

Yep, looks like Toulon are waving the open cheque under his nose. The guy is a simple man of the land, he knows his time as a World-class pro sportsman is short so clearly holds that in priority to a RWC-glory. It tears my heart out, but cant really criticise him either. He certainly gave muchos pleasure when donning Black.

I hope its merely bargaining chips with the NZRU….

Not too distraught, the Owen Franks and Clint Newlands’ give me some cause for optimism however.

(*sob sob*……who am I kidding….).

@Big Hit:

the only ‘nonsense’ is your inability to see that the rugby World passed Wilko by many many moons ago. DC and Giteau and, lately, Morne too, make more linebreaks in 1-2 matches than Wilko has in the past 7 years. No pack, no Wilko.