Nigel Owens: New rugby law is just going to create more problems, not solve them

This summer will see three new law changes introduced by World Rugby and the one that has got a lot of people talking revolves around the scrum.

From July 1, the option of taking a scrum when a free-kick is awarded will be removed, in a move to encourage the ball being kept in motion and keep the game fast and free-flowing.

However, I fear that introducing this new law is simply papering over the cracks of the game’s issues and is more likely to create further problems than solve the existing ones.

We must always remember that rugby has always been a very unique sport because it is a sport for all shapes and sizes. That is one of the main attractions, people play the game because there’s a place for them in it.

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For the guys in the front row, the likes of your Adam Joneses and your Ben Tameifunas, their bread and butter is being in the scrum. It’s a chance for them to use their strength and physical ability to benefit their team.

That’s the same for all front rows, including the youngsters coming through. I was speaking out in Belfast last weekend and there were a couple of young players there who were playing in the front row and wouldn’t want to play anywhere else.

We simply have to ensure that the scrum remains an integral part of the game. If it’s not, then we are going to lose these players - and damage the game itself.

When you have a scrum setup, you have 16 players bound in the scrum, so what you have behind you is space. It’s important to be able to keep those 16 players in the scrum for as long as you can, because when the ball comes out, there’s space for them to attack.

If we don’t have those players in the scrum, we’re just going to have continuous pick-and-go ball. You’re not going to better the game at all. It is less collisions we need to encourage in the game, not more.

With this new law, World Rugby is not bringing in something which is not going to deal with the issues that are at play, but it is going to depower the scrum and take away an important part of the game. If we’re not careful, within a couple of years we will be like rugby league, with even less space on the field that what we have now.

We need to deal with the negativity at scrum-time and bringing in the free-kick law is not going to do that. It may well encourage more of it.

Imagine you’re a weak scrummaging side and a scrum is awarded. With this new law, you’re just going to give a free-kick away by making a deliberate error as the stronger opposition won’t be able to take the scrum, where they have the advantage.

And what will you have then? A wall of defence in front of you or more up-and-under box kicking.

There are three or four reasons you can give a free-kick away, and you’ll be sanctioned with a penalty if you do it more than once, so teams will only be able to get away with these deliberate moves three or four times. But as we know, rugby matches can be decided by just one moment and giving weaker teams a loophole like this could prove significant.

I just don’t see what the merits are. I understand why something may want to be brought in about calling a mark and opting for a scrum from open play - as we saw from South Africa in the World Cup quarter-final - but to prevent the option for a scrum from a free-kick is just going to encourage a weaker team to be even more negative than they are already.

If you look at games now, teams are already cheating to get a free-kick at the scrum, stepping back to make it look like the opposition have driven early. But this new law will see that taken even further with weaker teams deliberately infringing to avoid another scrum.

It’s the same with the goal-line drop-out. It’s a negative part of the game, because you’re rewarding the defence. Sides can be negative around the tryline and we’re seeing players diving on the floor to hold up the ball and get that drop-out. It’s taken away the advantage to the attacking team of having a five-metre scrum.

I hope they have thought all these things through.

Of course, I understand that we don’t want a game which is a bore-fest of continuous collapsed scrums and penalties. Nobody wants that, even your purists and your front row players.

Obviously, a lot of people complain now about how long it takes for scrums to be set up and all the continuous resets and free-kicks and penalties that come along with it. But the answers on how to deal with that are right there in front of us.

Firstly, you need to get your front rows to be positive, and get the coaches to instil that in them. Players and front-row coaches must take responsibility if scrums are an issue during games, it’s up to them to do away with the negative tactics.

But then it becomes a referee issue if they don’t deal appropriately with the front row and the negative play or fail to reward the positive, dominant play. If they can do that, and players approach scrums more positively, then we shouldn’t have any of these issues.

The scrum is not the most important part of the game, of course. The most important part is the contact area, because that’s where the continuity comes from. But if you look at the game now, a lot of the contact area there’s no space there - it’s just pick-and-go, pick-and-go.

That’s where mauls, lineouts, scrums all come in as they lock people in for a period of time and then you just have the backs with some space to attack. If we have less of that, we’re going to have less space, and we won’t give the players who were not born to be a backline player a place in our wonderful game.

It will remove some of the spectacle too. Imagine Wales were playing England in Cardiff and the Welsh scrum shoved the English pack back a couple of metres for a try. The roof would be blown off the stadium and that’s how it should be.

The game is there for your attacking backs, your Shane Williams types. It’s there for your rampaging number eights. But it’s also there for your big, physical front rows - and we must remember that.

I could be proved wrong, but I’d be very very surprised if this new law brought any extra positives to the game. I can just see it increasing negativity and rewarding poor scrummaging and, if we’re not careful, the scrum will be gone for good.