'Thou shalt not talk about what happens in the front row'.
The Scotland hooker had just been asked to try to explain the mysteries of the front row battles in the scrum, given his side are to face the fearsome Argentina pack in their crucial rugby World Cup Pool B clash on Sunday.
The 27-year-old, who was flanker at age-group level before converting to hooker when he became a professional, however was having none of it -- preferring to observe the front rowers' long-established code of silence.
Or in his case, obfuscation as he attempted to answer the questioning without giving too many, if any, secrets of the dark arts away.
"I think they scrummage pretty similarly to France," he told reporters at the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club in Wellington today. "[But] they're unique in the way they do it.
"I haven't come across too many other countries who scrummage that way. It's a challenge but we have ways around it and ways of dealing with it."
Ford did mention the Argentine props approach the scrum from different angles and had "different ways of manipulating against the tighthead and loosehead" but he felt to go into any more details would be a "long debate".
When he was asked whether a long debate may be necessary as very few people really understood what was going on in the front row he replied with a laugh: "Half the time I'm the same," before he eventually relented.
"[Their] props come in and try and pop you up, try to get three on twos and sometimes just have straight three on three matchups and drive straight through," he said.
"Or they're working an angle trying to take one of our props out of the game."
While the code of omerta that binds front rowers prevented Ford from going into great detail, he said he was confident the Scottish pack would be able to handle the Pumas and their 'bajada' scrummaging when they clash at Wellington Regional Stadium on Sunday.
"We scrummaged well last time [against the Pumas]. We know we can do it," he said of having won three of their previous four games against the South Americans.
"There's not so much a mystique about it. We just have to be switched on and in the right mindset to do the job, if we're not, it [will not] be an easy day."