{"id":348966,"date":"2026-02-21T12:05:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T12:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/348966\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T12:05:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T12:05:13","slug":"irelands-lack-of-scrum-culture-and-how-it-can-be-fixed-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/348966\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s lack of \u2018scrum culture\u2019 and how it can be fixed \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has ceased to even be the elephant in the room. There\u2019s no hiding from it any more. The scrum has become an Achilles heel in Irish rugby, and it\u2019s not just the international team, it is the provinces as well. It is as if everywhere you look an Irish scrum is going backwards, or airborne, or both.<\/p>\n

One thinks back to Leinster\u2019s<\/a> early season games in South Africa. Or the carnage wreaked upon the Irish<\/a> scrum by the Springboks<\/a> in November. Or the indignity heaped upon John Ryan when given a helicopter view of Bath in the Rec, or Lions frontrowers Tadhg Furlong and Dan Sheehan \u201cgetting their wings\u201d as Andy Farrell<\/a> put it last Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cA few Aer Lingus flights,\u201d admits David Kilcoyne, who had some fun at his former team-mates\u2019 expense on his podcast, The Rugby Ruck, earlier this week. \u201cAnd I\u2019m not flying till one o\u2019clock tomorrow\u201d, added the former Munster loosehead, who played 220 times for Munster and 56 times for Ireland in reference to his flight to London.<\/p>\n

We meet in the Ballsbridge cafe Mister Magpie on Wednesday, across the road from where he works in aircraft leasing from his office in Aergo Capital, two days ahead of him playing in the Legends match on Friday night in The Stoop, in aid of the Lewis Moody Foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think you have to take them all individually. Look at the South Africa game,\u201d he says, starting with the 24-13 loss last November when Ireland conceded six scrum penalties, one of which was a penalty try, and which accounted for two of their four yellow cards.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think you can compare any team in the world with the South African scrum. I\u2019ve been coached under Rassie [Erasmus] and Daan Human, the [Boks] scrum coach. The scrum is the heartbeat of their game.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Six Nations: How Ireland can beat England and what they can learn from ScotlandOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always been a South African way, but then you get an unbelievable coach, Rassie, who identifies a perceived weakness in other teams. He\u2019s going to play to their strengths and he\u2019s built an army now, of tightheads and looseheads,\u201d adds Kilcoyne, pointing to the absence of Frans Malherbe and Vincent Koch from the November tour and the loss of Ox Nch\u00e9 in the opening game against Japan. Yet they still had Wilco Louw, Thomas du Toit, Neethling Fouch\u00e9 and Asenathi Ntlabakanye, with Erasmus also promoting the under-20 prop who won his first three caps on that tour.<\/p>\n

Against France, Kilcoyne says that Ireland played poorly despite their set-piece holding up well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually thought the lads acquitted themselves quite well and [Michael] Milne did very well off the bench, added a lot of impact as well around the park, which I was excited to see.<\/p>\n

\n

Springboks flatten Ireland. They mauled them in contact, the scrum, & kept them trapped in their 22. Pure South African muscle, pure heritage rugby. A ruthless win, & Ireland had no answers for any of it. Leave the sexy stuff out to them, give me this kind of win any day #IREvRSA<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/hI2Aq96VIn<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 RUGGA RUGBY (@RuggaRugby) November 22, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThey changed it then the following week, I wasn\u2019t quite sure why,\u201d adds Kilcoyne with regard to bringing in the Ulster tighthead Tom O\u2019Toole as loosehead cover instead of Milne.<\/p>\n

Kilcoyne understands the idea of a hybrid prop freeing up a squad place at the World Cup. \u201cBut it\u2019s very hard to go playing tighthead one week, and then going to loosehead another week, and chopping and changing in mid-season, especially as Ireland have a lot of looseheads at the moment, but we\u2019ve been decimated through injury. It doesn\u2019t fully make sense to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reflecting on Last Saturday, Kilcoyne draws on his experience of scrummaging against Simone Ferrari.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a wily old character and he causes a lot of problems. He\u2019s a great scrummager, and he always has been. His name may be Ferrari, but he doesn\u2019t scrum straight. He was always going to be a tricky customer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kilcoyne also believes Furlong remains one of the best tightheads in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know he got wings last weekend, but that was one scrum and no one will be harder on him than Tadhg himself, and he also has the strength of character and confidence to dial it in this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can get caught. Tadhg was fresh on, he was blowing; that little shock in your first game back. Everyone gets it, no matter how seasoned a campaigner you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ireland'sIreland’s Dan Sheehan is lifted in a scrum. Photograph: Billy Stickland\/Inpho <\/p>\n

Kilcoyne cites the emergence of Paddy McCarthy and a tighthead lock in Edwin Edogbo as two plusses.<\/p>\n

Like pretty much everyone else, Kilcoyne has huge hopes for McCarthy and along with Edogbo, says: \u201cThere\u2019s small little wins in this transitionary phase, but two very important ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another is Thomas Clarkson, whom Kilcoyne says has added bulk, is dynamic and has clearly learned from Rabah Slimani, much as BJ Botha was the biggest playing influence on his own career during the South African prop\u2019s time at Munster. He welcomes the decision by the IRFU performance manager David Humphreys to relent on the provinces signing overseas props and also cites the AIL as an invaluable breeding ground for frontrow forwards, above all after coming out of the schools system where there is a one-and-a-half metre scrummaging rule.<\/p>\n

Kilcoyne stresses that time for scrummaging sessions is limited in any match week, be it for a province or Ireland, and that the plan for any given game will be devised more on \u201ca massive amount of video analysis\u201d and on meetings between the frontrowers and the Ireland scrum coach John Fogarty.<\/p>\n

The English frontrow is comprised of Ellis Genge, Luke Cowan-Dickie and Joe Heyes, against whom Kilcoyne had many good battles and whom he describes as another strong and tricky scrummager.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a bigger battle and now you\u2019re going against a wounded England, who are going to come out of the traps and like to assert their dominance at Twickenham.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve played over there, against an English scrum, and if you thought last week was hard, this week is going to be an awful lot harder. But hopefully lessons have been learned and I\u2019m sure \u2018Fogs\u2019 and Paulie [O\u2019Connell] will have a plan, and they\u2019re going to be ultra paranoid about the set-piece this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Owen Doyle: World Rugby have the scrum on death rowOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Technically, the Italian scrum driving Furlong and Sheehan up and off the ground last week was illegal according to World Rugby\u2019s Law 19.39, namely dangerous play in a scrum, which includes section c: \u201cIntentionally lifting an opponent off their feet or forcing them upwards out of the scrum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Be that as it may, Kilcoyne counters: \u201cYeah, but there\u2019s also an unwritten law, what it does physically and mentally to the other team, and it destroys them.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I would gladly take that penalty, every day of the week, and I know Rassie Erasmus would. You\u2019ve laid down a marker and broken your opponents\u2019 spirit,\u201d says Kilcoyne, who also stresses that the Irish scrum has gone well against South Africa in several past meetings, not least the World Cup.<\/p>\n

\"IrishIrish scrumming against South Africa. Photograph: Gary Carr\/Inpho <\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a really good game plan against their scrum and we got a penalty, under the sticks, against them. And it was a massive point in the game, but, we knew the pictures they [officials] were looking for. So, perception\u2019s reality, and I think it\u2019s very important, this week, to paint a good picture at the first scrum, with real discipline and shown an ambition to go forward, because refs are human.\u201d<\/p>\n

At heart, as well as a numbers and size deficit, unlike South Africa, France, Italy and England, Irish rugby lacks \u201ca scrum culture\u201d, especially since Roly Meates was in his pomp. And it tell us much that Meates stood out like a sore thumb for having such a passion for the scrum.<\/p>\n

The good news is that S\u00e9amus Toomey is endeavouring to inject Irish rugby with a scrum culture, though like all these things this is not an overnight fix.<\/p>\n

Toomey joined Blackrock College in September 2011 before being appointed by Humphreys as the IRFU\u2019s full-time performance pathway scrum coach in January 2025. Well, better late than never.<\/p>\n

In Toomey\u2019s time with Blackrock, the school produced Oli Jager, Jeremy Loughman, Thomas Clarkson, Gus McCarthy and Paddy McCarthy, as well as Leinster\u2019s ex-Ireland under-20 tighthead Niall Smyth, for whom there are high hopes, and likewise for the current Irish under-20s captain, tighthead Sami Bishti, among others.<\/p>\n

As well as now overseeing the pathway through the under-18s, 19s and 20s, Toomey is the coach for the latter and has brought in former Connacht prop Brett Wilkinson as the Irish Under-18s scrum coach and the former Ulster schools and Bath hooker Niall Annett as the Under-19s scrum coach.<\/p>\n

\u201cNiall came into Ulster as an EPDO (elite player development officer) last July,\u201d says Toomey. \u201cHe\u2019s just finished playing in Bath, where he won a Challenge Cup last season. He\u2019s a good man. He\u2019s got good playing experience and he\u2019s a good technical coach, and he\u2019s starting out in his coaching journey.<\/p>\n

\"AA view of a scrum during Ireland’s game against Italy. Photograph: Inpho <\/p>\n

\u201cBrett played for Ealing Trailfinders and Connacht, where he\u2019s now a provincial talent coach down in Connacht. Brett is the Irish 18s scrum coach, and I support him as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cMyself and Brett and Niall are aligned,\u201d says Toomey, a passionate advocate of developing a scrum culture in Ireland.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am fully convinced we can compete against South Africa, England, France, all of them. But we need to be technically excellent, number one,\u201d says Toomey.<\/p>\n

To that end, and working alongside Ireland Under-20 and pathway lead physiotherapist Eoin Power, <\/b>he has introduced \u201ca scrum club\u201d for all national camps for the Irish under-18s, 19s and 20s forwards, in which the back five forwards are just as important as the frontrowers.<\/p>\n

All these \u201cscrum club\u201d sessions are videotaped and made available to the players to review in their own time on the Hudl platform.<\/p>\n

Their work is already bearing fruit. The Ireland Under-20s had two scrums on their own put-in against their French counterparts in Perpignan two weeks ago. Both were rock solid and they won a penalty on the second before the French got on top after the customary changes in the second half.<\/p>\n

But against Italy last week, in the 56th minute the Irish pack won a scrum penalty with seven against eight which was a key turning point in the match and earned a second on the Italian put-in in the last 10 minutes.<\/p>\n

As for the bigger picture, Kilcoyne is adamantly opposed to any moves to rid rugby union of the scrum or depower it like in rugby league.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a magnificent thing, unique. Look at the athletes it breeds. It makes the whole game interesting. It caters for every type of athlete and person. It\u2019s part of what probably makes rugby beautiful.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, no scrum, no win.\u201d<\/p>\n