By CHRIS LAIDLAW
The twilight world of the front row is an exclusive domain.
Nobody beyond this murky sub-culture has the slightest idea what actually happens in there and that, for the most part, includes the referees.
It is world in which three burly people from each side are required to find some mutual accommodation but rarely do.
Conspiracy theories abound, but even lock forwards who pride themselves on being slightly up the evolutionary chain from props have only the vaguest idea why one scrum collapses and the next stays up.
Scrums have, ironically, become one of the few areas where sustained body contact is still permitted.
The rule-makers have taken much of the contact away from the lineout and the tackled-ball situation, and as a result, emphasis has shifted to the scrum for the satisfaction of machismo.
For a number of teams the obsession with generating momentum at scrum time has produced some fairly hair-raising results, not least for the referees.
Whistle-blowing has taken on a whole new meaning now that referees are exposed to the threat of legal action against them for causing injury to a player.
Referees are only too well aware that it is their neck on the block as much as any unlucky front-row forward's. Recent case experience through the British courts has established a rather disturbing precedent.
It is one which could give rise in this country to a succession of oversized plaintiffs seeking redress from a referee who has failed to blow for a stoppage which might have averted a spinal or back injury.
The prospect of hefty damages claims looms and a lucrative new avenue of enterprise appears likely to open up for the legal fraternity. Obviously, sooner or later, the British precedent will provide grounds for an action against a New Zealand referee.
This has become a powerful motivating force for referees to get scrums over with as quickly as possible. There is nothing like the spectre of litigation to sharpen the wits and hasten recourse to the whistle.
It helps to explain why, this season, so many referees have seemed obsessed with propriety among the front rows and it is hard not to sympathise with them.
Not surprisingly more yellow cards are being dished out for scrum offences than ever. The new wheeling law is complicating the picture because it actively encourages manipulation by prop forwards.
Referees have decided that anyone who packs down illegally, who bores or drops an arm will be shown little mercy.
But because it is so hard to spot the guilty party, the referees are getting it wrong as much as they are getting it right and the endless string of restarts, penalties, warnings and sinbinnings is giving rise to consumer resistance.
We have, in short, a problem. But it cannot really be fixed by referees.
It can only be fixed by the offending players coming to the conclusion that they are in danger of making themselves highly unpopular by trying to bend the rules as well as their opponents.
Let's hope that it doesn't take a law suit finally to restore sanity to the scrums.
<i>Chris Laidlaw:</i> Mysterious world of the rugby scrum
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