England prop Joe Marler has backed a proposal for set-piece experts from South Africa boss Rassie Erasmus.
‘It can be such a minefield for the referees these days,’ said Marler, speaking on his own podcast.
‘It would be so good. If you were a scrum ref, we could make it proper WWE style with entrance music. I like that he’s coming up with different ideas.’
Erasmus said in his column for the Mail Online last week: ‘For international rugby, why not form a group of world-class scrummaging experts — former players or coaches — to serve as specialist scrummaging referees?
“These guys could roam along the touchline, as close as possible to the action and the moment a scrum is called they sprint on to officiate it. Get them in the gym so they are on and off the pitch quickly.
“It would be their only job, so they would have no impact on the rest of the game.
“There are about 20 scrums a match so you could even put a microphone on them and link them up to the TV commentary team so the viewers understand what’s going on.
“According to the law book, a team must be ready to form a scrum within 30 seconds of the referee’s mark. A scrum referee could police this. If you go back to the Nineties, a scrum would be formed 20 seconds from the knock on. It was so much quicker. Why are they becoming a nightmare?”
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Joe Marler ranks rugby’s three biggest sh**houses
When asked to name the three biggest shithouses he’d come across in his career in a recent Q&A, the results were unsurprising if we’re being honest.
#1. Dan Biggar
Marler became close friend with Biggar during the 2017 Lions tour, and famously gave the Welshman a b**lock naked cuddle following a World Cup warm-up game between England and Wales.
However, Biggar is the epitome of players you hate until they are on your team. The way the fly-half continues to moan to referees vociferously has seemingly only got worse throughout his career.
It got so bad that popular online personality and diehard Scotland fan Glove39 made a video called ‘birdman’ mocking the way in which he always raises his arms in frustration to officials. It’s no shock Marler namechecked him!