What exactly takes place in a scrum? Not only will a neophyte ask this question, but it will also be debated among various institutions. Making sure the player’s security and the conditions of a performing scrum are guaranteed is at the core of the question. This enquiry has been undertaken thanks to our front row rugby player practice. Playing in scrum has been an experience of both satisfaction and suffering, pleasure of impact and fear of injury... All this has, of course, evolved as experience was gained. The different studies concerning rugby scrums mostly focus on the anatomical and biomechanical aspects of injuries whereas, echoing the French Rugby Board’s concerns, we suggest another approach centered around the player’s point of view and his actual practice of scrum. An exploratory study made with five experts has allowed us to foresee different conceptions of performance in a scrum and to view different forms of practice. Then, the question of the diversity of actual practices and what organizes them was asked. This is why we have studied what is at stake in a scrum for a front line player.In order to document the meaning of this experience, we have investigated the embodied significance from materials of observation and interviews of auto-confrontation and in re-situ subjective. Ten players have voluntarily participated in the study: one of them played in Federal 2 (category C), the others in “Hopes”, Federal 1, Pro D2, Top14 or Top 10 (category A).Among front line players we have identified different sensibilities to: the sensibility to impact, to the fact of winning the ball, to scrum refereeing, to individual or collective duel, to the fact of moving forward / not backward. Thus, different practices have been revealed, showing different forms of performance in a scrum. The latter have sometimes been questioned by some coaches for a given post and with security instructions and requirements. This work has also allowedan enhancement of the complexity of normed games. It is true that, for any player, the norms that organize his activity in the mid of a scrum are diverse, sometimes even controversial: more contingent norms have been spotted. Finally, it has been demonstrated that the same specific sensibility to can actually be of different kinds.By outlining different sensibilities to, our workbrings a new typology of high risk players and allows new perspectives concerning the prevention of scrum injuries. As a matter of fact, those players tend to take disproportionate risks “thoughtlessly”, thus putting at risk their physical integrity or their partners’ or opponents ‘just because their micro-world is organized around concerns that make those risks largely unnoticed.
