Wallaby hooker Stephen Moore says it will take time for the new scrum calls to make their mark, while his team look to restore their own scrum’s reputation against New Zealand this Saturday.
The Bledisloe Cup and Rugby Championship match at ANZ Stadium will include the new “crouch, bind, set” calls at scrum time.
Props will now be required to lock arms rather than just touch, in a move that administrators hope will reduce the amount of reset scrums.
Moore expected the hit would lose power by up to 25 per cent and that there would be more of a wrestling component in the scrums.
He said he expected Saturday’s match to be a learning experience for everyone, including referee Craig Joubert, and expected some teething problems.
“Obviously the aim of the new calls is to tidy up the scrum and have less collapses and make it less of a time waster in rugby,” Moore told AAP.
“If that’s what it achieves then I think it’s good, but I think it will take a while for us to see that.
“It is a bit of a different style for the front rowers and the whole forward pack to adapt to, so I’m not expecting it to be 100 per cent perfect straight away.
“I’m sure the referees will be well aware of that, and they are the same, they wouldn’t have refereed it before.
Moore said the Wallabies had been working hard on their scrummaging after being comprehensively outplayed in that area in the final British and Irish Lions Test.
“For the most part of that Lions series we scrummaged really well, it was just on that night we let ourselves down a little bit there, and our strategy maybe wasn’t where we needed it to be,” Moore said.
” I thought to their credit as well, they scrummaged really well on that night and their plan worked really well.
“Those kind of nights happen, you’ve got to take it on the chin and move on and we certainly need to scrummage well in the Rugby Championship.
“In any Test match the setpiece is crucial. This is going to be no different, so we know the importance of it.
“If we want to get a result, we’ve got to be strong in that area, so that’s what we’re working hard towards,” he said.