Richard Loe: Tinkering makes a mockery of the fans

Take a look at the scrums in the Super 14 so far this year. They're a mess. The referees and the faceless wonders who tinker with rugby's laws have broken the old rule: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

It's obviously being done in the name of safety but I don't remember any real problems with the safety of scrummaging last season. In fact, if you recall, referees were instructed to allow the scrum to become more of a contest. They wanted teams to have a good go and let the scrum become an attacking platform rather than just as a means of restarting the game.

If you were going to be cynical, you'd say that because the All Blacks have got a good scrum, the powers-that-be have decided to try and depower it again.

Maybe that's taking it too far but, if you look back through the years, it does seem that any time the All Blacks have got something good going, the law-tinkerers try to fix things so they don't have that advantage any more.

Last year, the All Blacks focused on their scrummaging and benefited from keener contests at Super 12 and international level. Carl Hayman and Tony Woodcock are right up there in the top ranks of world scrummaging now.

Then take a look at the match between the Highlanders and the Blues and the Hurricanes and the Force. Tappe Henning controlled the Hurricanes' match and it was a disaster. Plainly, the referees have been told to have a pause between "crouch, hold" and "engage".

But Tappe's pauses weren't pauses, they were an ice age. If you hold a sprinter for too long on "on your marks, get set...", you'll get false starts. That's what happened in the scrums. What a mess.

Henning is the guy who did the 2003 World Cup final and was heavily criticised for not letting the English scrum. He was basically penalising the English for being too strong - they should've destroyed the Australian scrum that day but weren't allowed to. It's like asking a winger to slow down because he's too fast or a lock to kneel because he's too tall.

Last year, the scrummaging was enjoyed by the players, the refs and the fans. So they fixed it - and now no one enjoys it. Rugby suffers too much from this kind of tinkering. The powers-that-be are now trialling new laws in South Africa that allow forwards to use their hands in the rucks and to collapse mauls.

What? If they are worried about safety, why are they allowing collapsed mauls? They are as dangerous as any collapsed scrum or spear tackle. As for using hands in rucks, words fail me.

You cannot keep going back to the old days because a game changes and must change. But I know a lot of rugby people who can't understand why they don't go back to the time when a side moving forward at ruck and maul got the put-in and when no hands were allowed in rucks.

If a player was able to put his body between the ball and the rucking side, he got a few boots and a few railway tracks.

If you could use your boots - safely - to discourage such play, then it sped up the ball to the backs. Again, it's all being done in the name of safety and the image of the game but surely not at the cost of detracting from the game itself.

-HERALD ON SUNDAY