TV View:The Super 14 season began on Friday on Sky Sports with a sack full of question marks hanging over the new rugby laws, most of them concerning how the game was going to change as a result of some serious tinkering.

The Southern Hemisphere teams have stepped forward and agreed to be the guinea pigs for the radical new changes, which at this point are being called "Partial Experimentation".

It seems the full tablespoon of the new medicine would have been too much for the boys to stomach in one go. The really juicy changes didn't apply at the weekend, such as the experiment that allows players to use their hands in rucks as long as they are on their feet and to take down rolling mauls, not to mention the shelving of the limit to the number of players in lineouts.

But with the downgrading of punishment for infringements at rucks from penalties to free kicks and the prohibition of the ball being passed back into the 22 and kicked out on the full, there were a few mindsets to explode.

With that in mind, Australia's Western Force faced The Sharks from Durban. Kelvin Deaker was the Aussie referee/coach and certainly posed another question: when does refereeing stop and coaching begin?.

"No. Stay. Wait. Get back. You're offside, seven. You're offside, seven. Don't go there Blues, don't go there. Am I serious? I am serious. Penalty, Blues."

Deaker was in full vocal mood for the match, while a number of luminaries lined up in the television gallery to give their tuppenceworth.

"Look out for the team that will adapt quickest to the new rules. They are the team that are going to score tries," said the Springbok Bobby backrow Skinstad.

Really, Bobby!

But the rule that tickled the Sky panel pink was the change in how far apart the backlines have to be from each other. Come scrum time, each backline must be five metres behind the number eight, which leaves a Grand Canyon for canny speedsters to make some ground.

"The thinking man's eight, nine and ten will open it up said the former England centre Will Greenwood. Dewi Morris thought the same, while Stuart Barnes, game enough to be a curmudgeon at the best of times, found himself strangely in agreement with the new laws.

"I found myself depressingly positive about all of them (changes)," said the mildly embarrassed Barnes with a toothy grin.

The former All Black captain Sean Fitzpatrick noted, "The players are taking a bit of time to come to terms with the laws."

More importantly, he observed: "Free kicks are actually encouraging players to infringe. In the old days it would have been a penalty."

It seems lawmakers must always understand that for every change designed to make the game better, there will be players and coaches eager to find a way to cynically exploit it.

Some of the impetus for making the experimental changes came from the fact players are bigger and faster and the laws that governed the game 50 years ago have become redundant. Despite the TMO, who can help out with try scores, referees are having to make decisions much faster.

The idea, too, of props and hookers solely trundling around the pitch from one scrum to another is now laughable.

Mistakes were made on all sides. The mild confusion over the rules as well as it being the first game of the Super 14 season made for a messy game and the jury is still out as to the real effect the changes are having.

However, compared to the laboured Magners League match between Munster and Edinburgh that took place on Setanta Sports an hour and a half after the Sharks' game against the Force, we say more experiments please.

To make the rugby world a better place in the long term, confusion must take place in the short term.

In that respect, think of the Northern Hemisphere teams that will go touring down south this year during the European summer, or the Tri-Nations sides that come to Europe for the pre-Christmas international matches. What rules will the referees apply and will the players remember what game they are playing? Er, will the referees know what game they are playing? The season of the experienced whistler Marius Jonker starts with two Super 14 matches with the "partial experimentation", followed by a Six Nations match in which the "old" laws will apply. Jeepers!

Jonkers then returns to handle Vodacom Cup matches . . . wait for it . . . in which all the new experimental laws will apply.

Skinstad had obviously locked himself in a video-analysis room and thought about the issues long and hard: "The team that adapts to the new rules quickest will score the most tries."

How right he is.