I decided to try out a little mini-GIF Room on one aspect of the game that bothered me on Saturday night – the scrum lottery and, in particular, the work of Dave Kilcoyne.
I maintained at the time that the problems on the loosehead side of Munster’s scrum was almost entirely down to David Wilkinson’s “interpretation” of what was going on in the tussle between Dave Kilcoyne and Conor Carey.
It’s a good example of the Refereeing Ecosystem I spoke about a few weeks ago. Connacht seem to have scouted Wilkinson’s particular issues with the scrum and used it to paint a favourable picture of the initial scrum battle.
Here’s the first scrummage of the game;
The contest on the referee’s side starts out at an angle and stays there until Connacht win the penalty.
You can make an argument that Kilcoyne starts out a little too high here but personally, I think the biggest factor in this scrum is Carey’s initial angle after the bind.
He starts at a subtle angle, binds crooked and then pushes through Kilcoyne.
My scrummaging experience is the same as Oliver’s in this GIF – that is to say, mainly looking from behind an arse cheek – but the one thing that I always thought was a good way to see if the opposition was boring in was to look at the feet.
If you watch Carey’s feet for the entirety of the opening sequence, you can see him positioning to bore in.
Once he has Kilcoyne angled out, this essentially becomes a 5 on 3 scrummaging scenario and Connacht get the penalty. Kilcoyne began to get some heat in my notifications immediately after this but there’s not much he can do here. The penalty was given for Kilcoyne driving sideways but there wasn’t really any other way this scrum could have gone, given how it started.
On another day, this might well have been reset or even blown up for a Munster penalty but the die has been set here on what’s acceptable.
The next scrum features a similar setup;
It’s a nice, subtle body angle from Carey on the initial bind impact, and that sets the tone for the push. Why wouldn’t he go back to the same gimmick as the last scrum where he was rewarded?
Munster get the ball out, but another picture has been painted for Wilkinson.
This is good, clever scrummaging from Carey.
It’s on Munster and Kilcoyne to adapt to the ecosystem that Wilkinson is putting in place.
“Get an angle on the bind and you’ll get the reward”.
The next scrum becomes absolutely crucial from a Munster perspective. Kilcoyne will now know that Wilkinson will punish the defending prop if he is seen to be at an angle.
Let’s look at how the next scrum penalty goes;
Kilcoyne starts crooked, walks around and gets a penalty as a reward. On another day, this is probably a Connacht penalty but the die has been set in the ecosystem of this game.
On a previous scrum, Kilcoyne got to “try out” the ref’s interpretation with an angled push that probably would have been a scrum penalty against him in any other game.
Instead, it was reset.
The silly thing is that when neither side angled in on the put in, the scrum was a fairly even contest.
