During a recent interview with Lions scrum coach, Julian Redelinghuis gave us some interesting insights into the coaching of a United Rugby Championship scrum.
He was very diplomatic on the refereeing of the scrums in matches. He explained that they concentrate to give the referee "good" pictures on the aspects that they have identified a particular referee concentrate on.
Furthermore, they hope that if they dominate the scrums they will get the majority decisions going their way and if there is any doubt by the referee the 50/50 decisions will go their way.
On the question of how they balance a fast gameplan with the bigger, dominating but obviously "slower" props he stated that he must make his props believe that they are fast and that they can run.
At the Lions, they pride themselves on the domination of the set pieces and finding a balance between speed and brawn is difficult.
They also concentrate on the work rate of props in the loose to "make-up" for the lack of their speed. An area where they concentrated with especially Carlu Sadie is his work rate in and around the loose scrums during matches, explaining the great work Sadie did on Saturday against the Bulls cleaning out one or two unlucky Bulls' players.