Have scrums always been like this? I know they were never the alpha Union style, but they look like a coffee morning meeting! The only "action" I can envisage is an against the head strike, but how often does that happen considering the apparent lack of any physicality in the scum?

I was a little surprised that scrums came back after they were suspended for COVID. I'm not aware they have changed much in recent years and to me serve little purpose other than perhaps creating space for the backs.

Scrums are very seldom contested in RL teams don't seem to want to even try.
Ball usually goes in through the loose head prop fwds legs, straight into the second row, soon as it is behind second row feet ball is out.
The art is breaking from the scrum at right time
They are supposed to bind correctly , loose fwd binding as long as his arms are around second row, head should be down.
So yip in comparison to ru its a coffee meeting g

Smithers you are bang on with assessment of the game, it was pretty basic RL and defenses were pretty evenly matched from 2 pretty equal team. Haven had the edge all the way through though, mainly due to more enthusiasm rather than skill.
The worky fev game, fev likely went into that game disrespecting the opposition a little bit hence the result
Good teams performance sometimes drop when playing against weaker teams.
Our first game against widnes, they were not great and likely got a roasting from coach for not taking us to the cleaners, hence last week's result.

Smithers, the telling point on which team were winning the defensive battle was evident with which team were getting penalised for offside, and which team were getting set restarts