What's going on with the scrum collapses?

'Currently 60% of all scrums collapse in Tier 1 internationals and 40% of scrums are required to be reset while the average time taken to complete a scrum has risen from 41 seconds to 53'

The last ten years the amount of scrums collapsing has defiantly been on a increase and its become a major annoyance for both players and fans! And not only this but penalties are being given from the ref by guess work. I don't blame the ref's, if it was that easy to understand what was going on in the scrum we would of come up with a solution by now but something does need to be done and hopefully sooner rather than later.


So what could be going wrong then?

- Could the problem be with the skin tight shirts?
Skin tight shirts are good for a couple reasons, they make it almost impossible for someone to scrag tackle a player through grabbing there shirt which most people would agree is a good thing. Also we all know the material which loose fitting jumpers are made of can pick up an insane amount of mud and water and by the end of the match your practically wearing a 5kg shirt (may be a slight exaggeration but you get the point).
But although the shirts are an improvement they may also be one of the problems!
They make it harder for the props to get a binding on the opposite prop leading to the prop slipping leading to a collapsed scrum.
But do I really think that the shirts are the main problem!?
The truth is no. There has to be be more of a problem than just the shirts but it may be worth thinking about changing something like putting a small loose patch on the prop's shirt where they can bind.


- Maybe the problem is with the size of players.
There's no doubt that as the years have gone by rugby players have got bigger and bigger and the margin for error is less, so lets think a bit of physics, the bigger the two forces acting on each other a change in one force creates a bigger consequence so lets say the change of force is a prop slipping its a lot harder for him to correct it and the chances are the scrum will collapse.
I have noticed that the collapses are more common as you get up to international level scrums where players are a lot bigger rather than lower level rugby like club so this also backs the theory.
So how could this be corrected then, well its about reducing the chance of error, for example making it easier for the props to bind along with other things which I'll talk about below.


- The problem could possibly be lying within the hit.

Many people seem to think the problem is the hit, linking to the point above the hit only seems to increase the likely hood of an error especially if one team wins the hit by quite a margin the other team is likely to crumple; the hit has been recently complicated more by the elongated paaaaause... engage because now the the opposite scrums, in the hope to win the scrum, are trying to predict when the ref will say engage leading to more instances where one team's scrum get the jump on the gun and dramatically winning the hit.

I think that the hit is one of the bigger problems but how can we fix it?

The thing is I really don't see the IRB doing anything about it and I don't blame them because its become such a major part of the scrum and for me, who's played with the hit all my life, would find the scrum a lot different without the hit.





I think all elements link together to create the mess of a scrum we see today and I still believe that they need to make some big changes to sort it out.
What do you think? comment or do the poll in the sidebar.