Johan Coetzee takes on the critics calling for law changes around the driving maul and argues they're pointing at the wrong problem — it's not the laws that are broken, it's defences that haven't solved the puzzle yet. The piece is anchored by South Africa's demolition of Italy in Turin, where the Boks won 14 of 15 lineouts, launched eight mauls and converted four into tries — a 0.5 tries-per-maul conversion rate that tops a 270-match international tracking sample since 2024. Malcolm Marx's first-half brace in that game pushed him to 31 Test tries in 95 appearances, making him the most prolific try-scoring forward in Springbok history and the outright leader among international front-rowers globally, with only Habana, Joost, Mapimpi and Jaque Fourie ahead of him in the all-time South African list.
Coetzee broadens the analysis beyond South Africa, using Scotland's historic win over the All Blacks — where Ewan Ashman scored a first-half hat-trick, the first against New Zealand by any player — to show how elite sides are evolving the maul beyond tight-five grunt by pulling backline players directly into the driving wedge. He then flips it: the All Blacks, reduced to 13 men, demonstrated that the maul's very threat can be weaponised defensively, while replacement hooker Asafo Aumua scored off a dummy peel precisely because the Scottish defence had over-committed to stopping the drive. The conclusion is that far from wrecking the spectacle, the modern maul is one of rugby's richest tactical chess matches — and teams complaining about it should be building better answers.