World Rugby has no plans to review uncontested scrum law

World Rugby has no plans to change its law that saw Italy having to play almost an hour with 13 players against Ireland yesterday.

The Azzurri lost hooker Gianmarco Lucchesi to an early injury and then saw replacement Hame Faiva sent off for a high tackle on Dan Sheehan.

To the bemusement of many of the Italian players, and the vast majority of the fans in the stadium, referee Nika Amashukeli explained that in the absence of a suitable qualified hooker, the game had to have uncontested scrums and Italy had to withdraw a player.

The officials implemented law 3.20, which had a massive impact on the game with Ireland running out 57-6 winners.

Italy head coach Kieran Crowley said afterwards: "It was a situation beyond our control, we couldn't do anything about it."

The rule originated in 2017, with Wales’ match against Georgia cited as one of the reasons it was brought in after the Welsh, under increased pressure from their opponents' pack, were unable to contest the scrums late on and held out for a narrow win

RTÉ Sport spoke to World Rugby and it confirmed that, on the strength of the incident in yesterday’s game, the law is not due for review.

"It’s an unfortunate chain of circumstances that is incredibly rare," said spokesperson Dominic Rumbles.

"A specialist player is injured and then the replacement is red-carded, which is avoidable. On top of that, Italy didn’t submit on the team-sheet any suitably qualified hookers to cover.

"Sometimes a team might have another player, maybe a back row who used to be a hooker, to be able to safely play there. They obviously run the risk by not doing that."

In order to avoid a situation where a team might fake injuries to get uncontested scrums, the law came into effect.

"You have the ability to