There is something powerfully ancient about the game of rugby: for as long as there have been people, surely, they have locked together in fierce and physical clashes to decide who among them is the most fearsome. It is a game of grit and muscle, won by the people most gifted with heft and speed and the skill to use those things to their own advantage. There might, in short, be nothing less obviously technological, even if the work is intensely technical.
That’s clear as the England team practice their scrum at their training camp outside of Girona, days before the beginning of the Six Nations and the team’s first match, against Wales. The heaving, hefty mass of 16 of the strongest men in the country binding together in an astonishing crush; incredible amounts of human force matched only by the equally incredible amounts of human force on the other side of the scrum. A 32-legged monster set against itself, giving everything to go barely anywhere.
