A month into the Super rugby season and two weeks into our local competition has seen quite a bit of controversy about one of the game's critical point of difference from many other oval ball games - the scrum.
The Crusaders vs Force game last Friday night "featured' a long line of successive scrums as players, and the referee, struggled to get scrum after scrum completed successfully.
According to the book of Rugby Laws, the purpose of a scrum is to restart play quickly, fairly and safely after a minor infringement or a stoppage (of play.) Certainly didn't happen in Christchurch.
It wasn't quick and it certainly wasn't safe in some cases, with one player hospitalised with a dislocated elbow after one of the many collapsed scrums. Some of the older generation might question the fairly contested aspect as well.
So if the restart is supposed to quick, fair and safe, what could possibly go wrong?
Most referees never played in the front row of a scrum, certainly in their adult life.
According to some front rowers I have spoken to there is an art in scrummaging - an art that is almost a closely guarded secret between the main players.
Luckily for we local referees, one of the WRFU's development officers gave us an insight into some of the techniques used by some of the wilier front rowers at our meeting this week.
This included tactics that both loose and tighthead players use to try and "unsettle" their immediate opponent.
Critical to this process was the positioning of the head in order to maximise pressure.
It was all very interesting, but in many cases, quite difficult for the untrained eye to detect in the depths of a scrum on the field.
Before the game, a referee takes each front row aside and discusses what he expects from them and what he is looking for when it comes to scrum time. Key words usually include "stability" and "pushing straight and square."
Listening to the three key calls - crouch, bind and set - rather than anticipating them is often mentioned too.
So you would think everyone is singing from the same songsheet at scrum time, especially as the players have had endless scrum practise and should be considered the experts at that phase of the game.
Problems tend to begin when one team has a scrum that is clearly more dominant than the other.
They will try to use that dominance to put the opposing scrum, especially the front row, under so much pressure that their scrum disintergrates or collapses.
If either of those two things happen, referees generally tend to penalise the failed team's scrum for offences such as "pulling back" or "front row standing up" or "collapsing under pressure".
In the latter case, you can usually see which front rower has gone to ground first to cause the collapse.
However, close scrutiny of the scrum laws suggests that, in some cases at least, it should be the dominant scrum which is penalised and here are some of the reasons why.
It is illegal for front row players to cause a scrum to collapse by "twisting, dipping or lowering their bodies" or "doing anything that is likely to cause the scrum to collapse".
Furthermore, it is also illegal to deliberately lift an opponent in the air or force an opponent upwards out of a scrum.
Referees are directed to "penalise strictly" any intentional collapsing of a scrum as this is considered dangerous play.
The pressure is on the referee to decide who has caused the collapse and why.
I would contend a lot of the collapsed scrums we see on TV have actually been caused by illegal actions of the dominant scrum, not those of the team whose scrum has collapsed.
Who, in their right mind, would deliberately collapse their own scrum and risk the best part of a thousand kilos driving their bodies into the ground, especially around the neck and spine area?
As I said earlier, the players are usually the experts and all they need to do in a dominant position is apply sufficient pressure (legally) to ensure they win the ball quickly, fairly and safely so play can continue instead of degenerating into a series of reset scrums.
Perhaps it is time for the authorities to take a closer look at the scrum laws and apply the same sort of pro-active thinking which is finally being applied to the concussion issue in rugby and other sports.
Either the laws need to be changed or illegal actions which cause scrum collapses need to be more strictly enforced.
I hasten to add however that scrums in our local competitions are probably a lot fairer contests than those seen at higher levels.
Now, thanks to WRFU's Justin Lock, referees have an even better idea of what to look for when adjudicating at scrum time.