Cape Town - The Crusaders were not happy with the Sharks' tactics at scrum time following last Friday’s 21-21 Super Rugby draw in Christchurch.
The Crusaders conceded 13 penalties in the match, with a number of those coming at scrum time.
And their No 8 Kieran Read was not a happy camper afterwards.
"From our point of view, we want to scrum, we want to get the ball and get out. When you've got a team which is potentially trying tricks and isn't doing the same thing every scrum, you're going to scrums which go down and don't complete," the All Blacks skipper told the Stuff.co.nz website.
He added: "When one scrum is wanting to scrum and to keep it up, I don't think we got rewarded for that. It's important for refs to hopefully learn from that. It is frustrating. It's important we don't let that boil over into the rest of our game. We're doing work on it. But as I said, when a team just wants to pull back on a scrum and you're hitting like you have previously, and they've taken it, the scrum is going to go down."
Before the Crusaders departed for South Africa on Saturday, their coach Scott Robertson said it was paramount his team worked alongside officials to get it right at scrum time.
The Crusaders will face the Bulls in Pretoria on Friday (19:10 kick-off), before facing the Stormers in Cape Town the following week (May 18 - 17:15).
