The Aussie front row is being a little unreasonably derided by some posters on here imo. As @Braveheart says, the starting scrum had few problems on the EOYT. Mostly, our problems arose with changes in the scrum. But the main problem was quite clearly not with the reserve props, but with the reserve lock. The evidence was that the scrum started to deteriorate when Will Skelton came on no matter whether Kepu was still in the front row, or either Alexander or Faulkner were then on the field. Further evidence is that against England, there was no collapsed scrum nor a single scrum penalty against Alexander in the period he was on the ground. And yet, as some contend, our scrum was totally dominated by the Poms. The only domination I saw was when the England prop bound at a significant angle, and the flanker moved forward to form a four man front row. That, coupled with some of our backrow failing to stay in until the scrum was finished accounted for most of our problems.
These things hopefully can be sorted with proper coaching rather than the resurrection of players who aren't even eligible because they are playing overseas.
I think Ben Alexander particularly has been unreasonably maligned by some as he has suffered most from the lack of effective support behind him in the scrum, but I wouldn't be overly concerned if either Holmes or Weeks (or PAE this year) are tried so long as they are in good form in the Super comp, but I fear they will suffer the same fate if there's not a change in reserve lock personnel.