Shimmy: South Africa’s reserve scrum is the only one that can compete with Springboks’ first-choice pack
Springboks hooker Malcolm Marx and an inset of Hanyani Shimange.
Former Springbok Hanyani Shimange believes that South Africa have the two best scrummaging front-rows in the world.
The set-piece has been a hotly debated topic throughout Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series and it hasn’t died down after the third Test match with the Springboks winning four penalties from the scrum, while they were also awarded a penalty try.
Earlier in the series, All Blacks boss Dave Rennie claimed that South Africa didn’t scrummage legally, stating that they ‘walked around’ in the scrums, an accusation that didn’t sit well with head coach Rassie Erasmus or his assistant Daan Human.
Springboks’ reserve front row
Rennie has addressed his concerns with World Rugby and revealed that the All Blacks and the governing body don’t see eye-to-eye, with his assistant coach Neil Barnes saying after the clash in Soweto that the Boks have ‘a gravy train’ of penalties from the set-piece.
Shimange believes that the Boks are simply just the best scrummaging nation in the game, so much so that their reserve front-rowers are the only ones that can compete with the first-choice.
He said as much on SuperSport’s Verdict show, where former centre Jean de Villiers asked: “Is there any scrum that can compete with the Bok one?”
“The reserve Bok one,” Shimange quipped.
Schalk Burger also appeared on the show and while he did not argue Shimmy’s claim, he did say that it all depends on how the set-pieces are officiated.
He pointed to the second Test between South Africa and New Zealand, which was refereed by Angus Gardner. The ex-world player of the year stated that the Australian official wasn’t willing to punish teams in the scrums and wanted the ball to be played away from the set-piece.
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“The contest has got to happen,” he said.
“So, like, you’ve got to give credit to the officials to actually let the contest happen [in Soweto], and I don’t think it can happen with any set of referees anyway.
“Maybe the French, they really appreciate the set-piece battle, but like we’ll get a referee where most of the time, you will be asked to play it away. Then you won’t get rewarded for dominance, like the Cape Town Test match. Like we didn’t really get rewarded for the amount of dominance we had.”
No pack can compete
Shimange, who is renowned for his knowledge of the scrums, doubled down on his take that there isn’t a pack that competes with South Africa.
He used recent Test matches to back up his point and pointed to Scotland as one of the few teams that take the scrum seriously.
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“I don’t see a pack competing, to be honest,” he said.
“I mean, I’ve seen that Ireland come up with good tricks; Scotland are actually quite good; they actually want to scrum because Peter de Villiers [Scotland’s scrum coach] understands it. France, not really; we’ve scrummed them. Ireland, we saw what happened in Dublin. There isn’t one; we just got a super scrum.”
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