Here is a panorama of a rugby scrum. I’ve never been able to properly describe a scrum, and even when folks see one from outside, it really does not convey what it is about. This panorama does a pretty good job of it: Rugby the Scrum - La Mêlée Stade Toulousain - Pictures in 360 degrees Panorama QTVR Photo Panoramique
That’s quite cool! All I know is – if your vantage point of a scrum is that one – best to get th’ heck out from under quick smart! 
Neat!
Is that ball really oval?
Yes - very similar to an American football.
Fatter than an American football, so it drop and place kicks very nicely, while at the same time letting you put a spin on it when passing, like an American football, but the passes tend to be backward two-handed underhand passes.
That brings back some unpleasant memories.
Oyi - me too! I played club Ruggie for 4 years in college - some the most drunken painful times in my life - we used call our Hooker - jesus christ… Anyone who plays will know why
A better picture might the view from inside a ruck… 
17 years of goodness and light. Never lost a party.
Wow. They certainly do get…intimate with their grabbing, don’t they!
rowr
I’m guessing there’s a joke about “the second coming” in there, but I can’t figure out what it is.
Or does “Hooker” mean something other than “prostitute” in rugby terminology?
So what is the purpose of holding another man’s genitals? Or is that not actually what’s going on? Maybe he’s just clasping the fabric covering the other man’s genitals? Whatever. I’m curious what the purpose is. Is he being protected from getting punched in the nads or something?
I’m really not trying to turn this into a joke.
Hookers are usually smallish guys compared to the rest of the scrum, and are often hoisted up between their team’s prop forwards before the scrum engages. Since their arms will be outstretched to wrap around the necks of their props, it’s somewhat reminiscent of Christ’s pose upon the cross, hence Phlosphr’s nickname for the team’s hooker.
[Great panoramas at that site, Muffin!]
I’ve always wondered that too, having grown up with watching the game and being considered “gay” at school because I didn’t like the game, when a lot of Rugby behaviour seems to be oriented around intimate grabbing and group showering.
Seems to me that they could still link themselves together without having to go up under the crotch. Weird.
They could and they not infrequently do. However, the crotch technique makes for the most efficient bind and keeps the lock’s arm out of the way of the flanker. If it didn’t have inherent advantages, it would have been dropped.
GL needs to learn the difference between male bonding and mass homosexuality. 
Exactly - 
Uhh OG - I’m feeling some psychosomatic pain from back in those days!
That is really fucking cool.
I played two years of high school rugby, but being a wing I was never inside the scrum.
“…Cunctator had never looked back too fondly on his days as a rugby ball…”
Eh, we were all kids.