Safety
Scrums are one of the most dangerous phases in rugby, since a collapse or improper engage can lead to a front row player damaging or even breaking his neck. For this reason, only trained players may play in the front row to help avoid injuries. If a team is without sufficient specialist front row players, for example because of injury or sin-binning, all scrums may be "uncontested scrums". In this situation, the packs engage, but do not push, and the team that still puts the ball into the scrum must win it without effort. Teams use a Scrum machine to train players.
Recently, a leading consultant surgeon in the UK has called for the ban of contested scrums, asserting they are too dangerous. There is very significant support for contested scrums however — former England hooker Brian Moore argued that "You would change the whole nature of the game and it would no longer be a game for all shapes and sizes as it is, uniquely, today."
Read more about this topic: Scrum (rugby Union)
Famous quotes containing the word safety:
“Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.”
—Stephen Vizinczey (b. 1933)
“Love no man in good earnest, nor no further in sport
neither, than with safety of a pure blush thou mayst in
honor come off again.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.... Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.”
—Joseph Heller (b. 1923)