Unsure on this one, if it’s contested then yes but can’t see any point if it’s just to put the ball in and stand up again. When I started watching and was hopefully understanding the game down at BV early to mid 70s I couldn’t wait for a scrum because 9 times out of 10 there was the left and rights to follow, best part of the game

I suppose you could liken the whole scrum issue to that of "playing the ball". I recently watched an old London Broncos v Canberra from 1997 and the referee, Connolly, actually penalised the players for not using the heel whilst playing the ball, yet in yesterday's Catalan/Saints game you hardly saw the heel make contact with the ball, particularly from Cats, yet the referee, Ben Thaler, let it go throughout the game. I suppose not quite the same as the scrum issue, but you either have, and enforce, the rule or not.

Yes after waiting half hour.

Yep...was watching the Sydney Roosters game the other night and Ryan Hall actually fed one of the scrums

Yep...have to agree BLM, and with Toronto now off-loading players, then who knows where he will end up next season....Hunslet ??
To me he is in the same boat as Kallum Watkins and should have hung his boots up 2 years ago !!

Soz, vasty! Misunderstood you. Based on what you have just explained I can only agree with you 100%. I always used to watch the contested scrums with interest and anticipation because in the days of specialist hookers there was nothing better than seeing a heel against the feeding scrum half.and hooker, and the ball whipped out to the (usually) scrum half.
I used to think it would be better if the referee fed the scrum to eliminate the biased feed, but I suspect there would have been calls of "Cheat" or similar from the crowd.

Back in the day a good hooker was only as good as his good blind side prop.

Haha...this got me thinking about the old terms used, 'blind side prop' 'field side, or open side prop', ''ball playing forward'.
One specialist open side prop I remember, I think Peter Fox brought him in ,was Les Tonks. Les must have been 17-18 stone and today would probably have struggled to be a water carrier, but in the scrum he excelled. How the game has changed!
I'd have contested scrums back tomorrow - to see forwards with some skills, instead of being the battering rams they are now.

A classic example was flash Flanagan at KR, his no 10 was Frank Fox Frank who a lot would say, exactly but he was in that team for a good reason and it wasn't his ball playing skills either, flash always praised him for helping his career.

When Peter Fox was coach at Wakefield, there was a prop that was in the team and fans were on Peter's back to drop him as he seemed to do nothing .Peter dropped the prop for one game and we did not get the ball out of the scrum all the match and lost .Peter said to the fan now you no what he does leave the coaching to me.Sorry can not remember the props name

Do you think that Peter Fox would have listened to the fans and dropped a player ?

Definitely if he were proving a point, he was like that, RL’s Clough. I suspect the player was probably injured so Foxy took advantage however I wouldn’t bet on it.