Players
The front row are usually the stockiest members of the scrum. Hookers are normally smaller than props so they may manoeuvre their lower bodies within the tight confines of the front row and tunnel. Props and locks both need to be strong, but the positions differ in their main criteria for selection. Since props are more directly involved in wrestling for position and channelling the drive forward, strength and weight are of prime importance for them. Strength is also important for locks, since they also push; however, height is more important for them than it is for front-row players. Locks are virtually always the tallest players on the team; they are used as the primary contestants for possession in another phase of the game, the line-out. Flankers and the number 8 do less of the pushing in the scrum, and need more speed, because their task is to quickly tackle or cover the opposing half-backs if the opposition wins the scrum. Approximately 40% of the power of the scrum is produced in the front row itself. In most professional teams the forward pack weighs at least 800 kg (1764 lbs).
Read more about this topic: Scrum (rugby Union)
Famous quotes containing the word players:
“The whole idea of image is so confused. On the one hand, Madison Avenue is worried about the image of the players in a tennis tour. On the other hand, sports events are often sponsored by the makers of junk food, beer, and cigarettes. What’s the message when an athlete who works at keeping her body fit is sponsored by a sugar-filled snack that does more harm than good?”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“Will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them
be well used, for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)