Writing in The Guardian Shaun Edwards urges those lambasting the scrum to think again.
"The scrum is in danger of getting a bad name. It's becoming the butt of those rugby fashionistas who seem intent on portraying it as a waste of playing time and merely a method of restarting the game, rather than something very much at the core of the sport. They should know better and if last weekend didn't help them to see the light, then I suspect little will. We'll continue to get "Scrum time 8 minutes" flashed up on our television screens or retired backs poking fun, when a little thought would go a long way.
"At scrum time packs have been instructed to "Crouch, touch, pause" before they "Engage". The result has been endless collapses and resets, and when referees were then instructed to crack down on the resets, we got streams of penalties instead. Now, them that knows say that scrums have been turned into balancing acts as front rows struggle not to concede any advantage in the hit and increasingly they are suggesting removing the "pause" phase of the preliminaries because it's one complication too many, especially if the referee gets the rhythm wrong and delays too long before calling engage. Also because there is a de facto pause in the instruction anyway."
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