Unusual.
These days a scrum is usually half-turned, collapsed or wheeled across the pitch within a mili-second of it being fed into the hooker by the scrum-half.
Either that or the ball is put in crookedly and hooked before anyone has even blinked.
But in Wednesday’s game between Australia and Fiji that increasingly rare thing happened – the stalemate in the scrum.
Both sides pushing and heaving with all their might but nobody going anywhere.
The Australia hooker, Stephen Moore, couldn’t even get his feet out of the ground to hook the ball, such was the pressure being put on by the Fijians.
Unsurprisingly the whole thing ended in a fisticuffs.
It certainly thrilled TV3’s analyst Shane Byrne who pointed out the impressive refereeing by Glen Jackson who resisted the urge to blow the whistle and let the scrum unfold for as long as possible before penalising the Aussies.
