Howe

(Part 2 of 2)

The scrums aren't a problem but what is kind of weird is that the hooker still defends up the guts with the rest of the forwards and often makes more tackles than anyone else. It has always seemed a bit silly to me that the player who touched the ball more than anyone else in every game, had to literally follow the play around for every tackle in attack and started off every attacking movement also had to make more tackles than anyone else. I definitely get the feeling that'll change eventually and we'll see hookers defend a bit wider and have a lighter defensive load.

League scrums are even more irrelevant than you think. Often teams will just pack random backs into the scrum to get power-running forwards outside the scrum, and the hooker often actually packs in at lock these days so they can pass the ball off the scrum base like they would from dummy half. There's never a push and over 99% of scrums would be won with the feed.

It's just the way the position evolved. Dummy half would originally just be filled by whoever was close to the ball, but teams eventually started using the hooker in the spot because hookers had no other attacking responsibility outside scrums and it was a simple job of picking up the ball and passing it to the halfback. As the game became more refined and scrums became less relevant, approaching the point they are today, coaches saw the opportunity to get someone in there with genuine vision, creativity and specialist skills for working around the ruck and passing off the ground.

(Continued next message)