RUGBY LEAGUE is a game in which two sides of 17 fit, strong men are locked in mortal combat - except when they drape their arms over each others' shoulders, lean forward and, obeying a strict no-compete clause, play out a short-act farce.

Like a vestigal organ rendered obsolete by evolution, the scrum hangs on to the body of rugby league but performs no useful purpose. It's the appendix of the game: a place where it must eventually end up but to which no one is yet prepared to banish it.

This year, however, scrums are back. Referees are carrying on like coaches from the Picton Magpies under-6s, telling first-grade stars who earn $300,000 a season where their arms and heads go. Not because they want to, mind you - because the coaches asked for it.

But the coaches either don't coach their players how to perform their role in the farce or - more likely - won't. While all coaches agreed at the end of last season that something ought to be done to open up attacking opportunities from the scrum - and that making players bind properly would be a good place to start - every single one knows that the obligation applies only to other sides in the competition.

No coach dares tell his own forwards to bind properly lest they not be able to jump out of the scrum and knock over the ball-runner in the first hit-up.

Assistant referees coach Bill Harrigan estimates "seven or eight" scrums are being repacked each game in the name of Operation Bind-and-Hold.

"We're trying to tidy up the scrums," he explained. "We all said last November, 'Let's make them presentable.' Even though the ball is going to go in the second row, we'll make it presentable so they're not just farcical."

Harrigan was referring to an NRL summit in which the coaches authorised the clean-up. Referees' boss Robert Finch accepted the brief, but the frustration of implementing it is apparent.

"We're really working hard to get them right; I just wish we had players who knew how to pack properly," he said. "It's just disappointing that you've got to go through the process every time you pack a scrum. But that's what we've been asked to do and we'll continue to do so."

Finch has no doubt the campaign on scrums is chewing up time on the game clock. It may even help explain why there have been 5 per cent fewer play-the-balls on average this season.

"There has been plenty of opportunity to teach people how to pack into a scrum," Finch said. "Let me tell you, it is frustrating for the referee every time he packs a scrum to have to tell people, 'You put your hand over here, you put your head in there, you bind tighter.' It's as frustrating for him as it is for those watching it. But that's what the game wanted and that's what we're delivering."

The frustration only increases when the player he's telling how to bind is a winger or fullback. "Nathan Merritt, bind properly."

Hang on, if scrums are about attacking opportunities, why on earth would one of the game's top try-scorers have his head - sort of - in a scrum?

"Coaches use it as a parking station for the next defensive set," Finch acknowledged.

They also often use a prop standing at first receiver to make the first hit-up - destroying the whole idea of creating attacking opportunities that should exist when the 12 players with their heads down and bums up are taken out of the defensive line.

Finch played in the era of competitive scrums and has no desire for a rerun. But he's not an abolitionist. "I suppose you could just turn it into a changeover, but you've then got 13 players spread across the field," he observed.

Former Balmain prop Steve Roach can't understand why referees are spending so much time lecturing.

"It's frustrating me, hearing these blokes standing there and talking for two or three minutes when, for the last 20 years, they've been getting it in and getting it out," he said. "If I want to go to a sermon, I'll go to church on Sunday."