The danger World Rugby’s high-handed law-makers face with their insistence on trying to marginalise the scrum is that it could easily lead to non-compliance, and lead to two (or more) versions of rugby union’s laws.
Causing fragmentation, dispute, and confusion around the laws is not part of World Rugby’s remit.
However, the failure of its law-making committees to recognise the core importance of the scrum, by this week confirming the anti-scrum edict that teams can no longer opt to scrum from a free-kick, is doing exactly that.
The goal-line drop-out is a hopeless law which has reduced the...