For ten years the scrum was a way to restart the game. It is a weapon again.
The scrum never stopped mattering to coaches, but it did stop mattering to scoreboards. Refereeing interpretations around the engagement made it hard to win a decisive advantage, and attacking sides learned to play from messy ball. That balance has shifted, and the sides with genuine set-piece superiority are converting it into points at a rate not seen since the last law review.
A slow correction
The mechanism is penalties and territory rather than pushover tries. A scrum that reliably wins a penalty inside the opponent’s half is worth three points or an attacking lineout, several times a match. Over a season that is a meaningful fraction of a team’s total.
The recruitment consequence
The consequence is recruitment. Tighthead props with genuine scrummaging ability have become the most expensive non-international players in the game, and academies that spent a decade producing mobile front rows are reassessing. It is a slow correction, but it is clearly under way.
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