Bruce
I read your post above and have decided to keep an eye on my letter box in the future. It is obvious that you have been reading my mail.
As I read through it I thought: there's a good bit, and there's another, until I realised it was all good bits.
I posted in another thread on the evolution of the scrum hit and how not too long ago by our standards the scrum guys just folded into each other, with the back rowers joining in and often waited for the scrummie to pick up the ball. Then the scrum shove started with the put in as the laws at the time prescribed. Come to think of it: they still do.
Pro rugby has enabled front rowers to get paid for working our in the gym and being able to do power hits provided their neck discs hold out. That has exacerbated the problem.
Your idea of making the front rowers bind first has never interested the IRB though Blind Freddie can see that scrum collapses, the spawn of the power hit, are a blight on the game. And as you correctly point out: there are other consequences.
I have to quote this bit though:
After the front rows have engaged the referee would call in the other players. The laws against pushing over the mark or failing to take the weight of the opposition pack would be applied until the ball is fed into the scrum. And most importantly there should be an insistence that the ball be fed along the centre line just as it has to be in lineouts.
We would see a return to actual hooking, one of the great art forms of rugby. Scrums would thereby become a genuine contest and we would see genuine tight heads being won.
Some of us have been around for long enough to remember when packs could systematically direct ball to different channels or hold it in front of the No. 8's feet until the half back called for it.
A tear came to my eye.
Younger blokes may beat their chests from their lounge chairs decrying a suggestion of the loss of the power aspect of the hit but there was still a lot of power in the old days - and technique - but it was after the ball was put into the scrum, and
the players were ready and stable. The dominant scrum dominated don't you worry; it didn't need a power hit and the scrums stayed up most of the time. Free kicks for early engages as guessed by the referee? They were already engaged. Now and then there was one for pushing before the put in but so are there now.
As for the hooking contest: to be fair the younger blokes won't know what we are talking about unless they have read a few old rugby books. The idea of a contest for the ball by two hookers is outside their experience because they would think that the defending hooker always pushed, not hooked. If they had heard of it would think it was just a quaint old practice of the olden times.
Hopefully they will see it someday.