Quote: Itchy Arsenal "It's never too late to learn so educate me.'"
Many moons ago the scrum was contested with the ball feed directly between the two packs, similar to what you see in union. The props would prop up the scrum and hooker who's job it was to 'hook the ball' with their feet obtaining possession for their team.
Nowadays the scrum feed rarely sees a put in between the two front rows, thus meaning no 'hooking' takes place. Usually we see the ball feeder feed the ball into the second row of the scrum etc.
However the 9 plays out of acting dummy half, when the player is tackled his duty (usually) is to retrieve the ball after an uncontested tackle to feed out from dummy half.