Rugby

All packed and ready to travel to Oslo for the weekends 7s fun. Still have a slight cold though. Really struggled to get myself sprinting at training last night. But felt good and strong hitting the pad. So for my game, I'm in decent shape.

Funny thing is. Put me in front of an opposition front row of gorrillas, and the prospect makes me grin. Put me on a full pitch with only 6 team mates, and all that space, and I do a little poo.

Really need experiance, and a cool head, to compensate for old legs this weekend.

Looking forward to it :)

Best of luck with it!

Bobbo, if I could I would rep you for the SH/NH thing ^up there. I was about to wade into this, then though better of it incase of being accused of being a snarkey foreigner. I agree with a bit of what you're sayin' , but we don't what to get it to much like league Remember, every point of contact should be contestable.

Guscott, yes
Best man on tour -Keith Wood

There are two options though:

Make the point of contact contestable and keep the hit, in which case we will continue to have what we do now with numerous re-sets (up north at least) etc. the problem with the hit is that it happens too quickly to referee effectively. The ref is therefore reliant on the front rows to do the right thing, lets face it most front row players world wide see the rule book more as a set of guidelines and will do whatever they can to get one up on their opposite man. This is not a very effective way to enforce the rules, as much as I praise the style of rugby in the SH if NH teams regularly start to gain an advantage through bending the rules at the hit I do not think it will be long before they follow suit.

However if you make the engage soft the scrum can still be contested very effectively, if the oppo hooker wins the ball your team can still drive them off the it and a good hooker becomes even more of a lynchpin in the team he plays for as it becomes MUCH easier to win the ball against the head.