No. Show me where I said that? What I said was they were taking the hooker's safety into consideration. There's a hell of a lot more pressure on the scrum than there was a decade ago, and it can get dangerous for the hooker to lift a leg and extend it out to hook the ball. A number of players had raised this issue with referees, and instead of going back to the second-row feeds, they're taking that center line to be a little wider than a piece of string. The ball is still fed into the tunnel, but if it's fed directly to the feet of the hooker, that's a crooked feed (if the ref calls it).
The other side of that is if a team has won a scrum, isn't the ref also awarding the defending team if a strict down-the-center-of-the-tunnel approach is taken? If you have the better scrum, you'd be knocking on all day just to win tighthead after tighthead, effectively getting awarded for failing.
And given the scrum changes, we're seeing more defending teams win scrums as it is (at least in the first year -- not sure about now). So balls are being fed straighter -- but not always straight enough, and that's on refs; hookers are hooking again; and more scrums are being lost by the team with the feed, showing that they're still competitive. Those are all positives. Packs are still finding ways to reset scrums like a skipping record, but that's a different issue.
You seem to still be advocating that the team with the feed and loose head should be given some sort of extra advantage because they are the non-offending team.
With respect, a scrum is
supposed to be a method of restarting play after a minor infringement. The non-offending team get the loose head and the feed. That's their advantage. Beyond that it's
supposed to be a 50/50 contest just like lineouts, rucks, the tackle etc. People rave on about that's what different about rugby - the contest for possession at every point. People also rave on about the scrum as if it's sacrosanct because it's this contest for possession, when in fact it's become nothing of the sort. Particularly in the NH, it's become a penalty winning contest.
Like anything in sport, when the authorities change the balance in an aspect of the game there is a ripple effect.
Let the half put the ball in crooked - opposition can't strike so they focus entirely on the push, opposition don't strike so 8 men shove means more pressure on hooker who does strike = hooking contest gone. No hooking contest = pushing only, but one team is allowed to put the ball in their own side so we get teams attempting to engineer penalties to obtain possession.
Almost every NH game I watch has the commentators congratulating player X for earning his side a scrum penalty - as if this is some sort of skill which should be rewarded.
A number of posters seem to have conceded that the scrum is no longer a 50/50 contest for possession, so let's all stop the pretence that it is.
As far as I can see the scrum serves 2 functions in the modern game:
1 It gets the fat blokes tired
2 It gives the kickers shots at goal (or kicks for touch in defence)
