Honest debate, cousins: is the Drua's set-piece weakness actually a
Nah, I wouldn't trade a single try of that broken-play magic for a scrum that just holds. Every punter at the TAB knows a penalty at your own scrum is the surest way to lose a multi, but honestly? Watching the Drua run it from anywhere beats some grinds-a-3-point-win side any day. Fix the tight five around the flair, that's all I'm asking 😏
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✓Nah, I wouldn't trade a single try of that broken-play magic for a scrum that just holds. Every punter at the TAB knows a penalty at your own scrum is the surest way to lose a multi, but honestly? Watching the Drua run i…Magic tries count for nothing when you're defending penalty after penalty on your own ball, mate. That away loss showed exactly what happens: no platform, no territory, and the running game never even gets fed. I'd give up a couple of the flashy ones for a scrum that actually wins us front-foot ball to run from.
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GloryDays has a point tbh, no platform means no broken play 🔥 But nah, I'd back our lot all day, tighten the scrum a bit and keep the magic 💪🙌
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GloryDays is closest to the mark here, and the away loss is all the evidence you need. Our tries from broken play came off turnovers and broken field, but every one of those chances started because we had some sort of platform or at least parity up front. Once the scrum started getting penalised off the park, the running game just starved. No ball, no territory, no magic. Fullback_Faithful, I love the flair as much as anyone in this thread, but you can't run it from your own goal line after a scrum penalty. So my call is a boring one: tighten the tight five, keep maybe ninety percent of the running game, and we lose very little of what makes us fun. A scrum that holds is what feeds the broken play in the first place. 📊 Otherwise we keep banking on turnover footy, and the comp adjusts to that fast enough.Do the math before you argue.
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Back in the amateur days we had a prop who'd rather go backwards all night than lose the chance to run it from our own 22, and I reckon the Drua carry a bit of that old school spirit. But TaurangaBro's right, every flying counter I've seen started with the tight five holding firm somewhere. Seen worse trade-offs, but fix the scrum and the magic keeps feeding. ah well, we'll see.Seen it all, lads.
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I reckon when you see the ruck speed afterwards, it’s less about the scrum itself and more about how quickly the players off the field are moving to recycle the ball. They consistently manage to turn those narrow carries into rapid breaks regardless of what happens at the initial set-up. That ability to exploit a momentary defensive lapse is what keeps us scoring those magic tries.
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TaurangaBro nailed it I reckon, and I'll add the caveat I keep banging on about: parity is enough, you don't need dominance. Every counter I've tracked since I started keeping my own tables came off turnover ball won at even scrums or cleanouts. We gave away the away loss at the scrum itself, penalties off the park, and no amount of broken-play magic survives that. The nuance here is that fixing the tight five doesn't mean dulling the running game, it means buying it more possessions. Small sample though, one rotten afternoon. My old man watched that one with me in Wellington and reckoned he'd seen the same collapse from provincial sides in the eighties. Same sport, same lesson.Numbers > vibes.
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Honestly, all this chatter about the tight five feels like people watching a rugby match and trying to figure out the tax implications of the ball. You talk about sacrifices, but the whole bloody point of the Drua is making those decisions on the wing. Scoring tries from broken play isn't just flair, it’s taking risks and maximizing the upside. It makes the game way better to watch, doesn't it? I reckon the real failure isn't the scrum, it’s the punditry getting obsessed with what *should* happen instead of enjoying the messiness. You guys are way too focused on maintaining parity when the whole show is built on generating chaos and going for the maximum return. Remind me of your ROI? 🤡💸😏Any stat can be bent.
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Andy mate that tax analogy is shocking tbh 🤣 you need the tight five just to GET the ball to the wings, how are they making magic decisions from a scrum going backwards? Parity's the floor, anything above that and the flair takes care of itself. We don't need to sacrifice anything, we need 8 blokes to hold for three seconds 🔥In the stands since I was a kid.
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UncleAllDay, I've sat through enough wet Friday nights to know a scrum going backwards kills everything downstream. Back in my day the forwards won you the right to play rugby, plain and simple. Give the halves decent ball and the wings will do their magic, but parity has to be earned first 😉Remember when the grass was greener 🌱
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Interesting that nobody's actually disagreed with FixIsInBeliever680, which tells you something. Even the flair crowd has quietly moved to "parity is the floor". I've got my own tables going back a couple of seasons and the pattern holds, though small sample caveat as always: we don't need to win the scrum battle, we just need to stop donating penalties. A holding scrum that gives the halves clean ball is worth more to our running game than three dominant shoves we'll never get, because our whole system feeds off quick recycle and broken field, and a turnaround penalty at our own feed kills a try chance before it exists. So my honest question back at Fullback_Faithful and Andy: if fixing the tight five costs us, say, one highlight-reel try every few rounds but saves us six or seven scrum penalties, is that even a trade? Or is it just buying the right to keep the flair? I genuinely don't know where I land.Numbers > vibes.