Time to scrum up!

The Springbok forwards are a formidable unit, but there is still an area where they can improve vastly!

Everyone who knows a little bit about rugby knows that if your forwards dominate the opposition forwards then you usually stand a much better chance of winning the match. The Springboks have world class players from 1 to 8, but if you are looking for an individual sport I suggest looking into tennis or golf.

The one area that the Boks need to do a lot more work on is their scrum. Pierre Spies with all his class did well under pressure behind an unsteady scrum, but imagine how effective he'd be on the front foot!

I have no complaints about the lineout, loose play and defense, even on attack our forwards are dangerous. The sight of Tendai 'Beast' Mtawarira cutting through the All Black line this past Saturday certainly puts a smile on the face of anyone that has played prop before, as props are usually labelled the 'slow fatties'.

The tight five (or engine room as some refer to it as) consists of the loosehead prop, hooker, tighthead prop and locks, and in my opinion they make up the most important unit of the entire team. You can take the best loose forwards and backline in the world and give them a weak sub-standard tight five, but without a fully functioning engine room there will be no go-forward.

The Springboks possess a finely tuned engine, but a bit of tweaking is needed to bring out the true potential and harness the full performance that we know they are capable of. The tweaking is needed at scrum time. The scrum is and will always continue to be a massive part of the 80 minutes during which rugby is played. There is no better example of this than when Isaac Ross got yellow carded in Saturday's test match and the Springboks scored a try off an All Black scrum that had a vital component missing.

In any team sport you need time for combinations to settle, none more so than rugby. As time goes by I predict that the Springbok scrum will improve, let's hope that for now it won't cost us.