RUGBY union's international law-makers will decisively shift the balance from defence towards attack if they adopt a proposal at this month's International Board (IB) annual meeting in London to keep all 16 forwards bound into a scrummage until it ends.
This is potentially as important a law change as there has been in two decades - including the controversial amendment of the ruck-and-maul law in 1992. It comes from New Zealand, with the express intention of eradicating midfield defensive congestion by keeping flankers elsewhere. It would radically alter the nature of wing-forward play.
But the proposal is the only change of more than cosmetic importance being considered by the IB, which is anxious to resist the pressure under the new professional dispensation for "entertainment" at the expense of the game's most intrinsic features.
Keith Rowlands, the board's secretary, briefed journalists for the last time before his retirement at board headquarters in Bristol yesterday. And, as he picked out this one prospective amendment, it can be assumed it has wide support. "It would be an enormous and fundamental change to the playing of the game," he said.
As the IB is considering siting itself "offshore" - probably in Dublin, Monte Carlo or Switzerland - for tax reasons, its days in Bristol appear numbered. Another change means that, from this annual meeting. the chairman of the board will be elected, and not appointed by Buggins' turn as previously.
Rowlands had ironically comforting words for the English Rugby Football Union in its distress at the grassroots uprising which it fears may, if the membership votes to re-impose amateurism, have to mean its withdrawal from the IB. "The game is not a professional game," he said. "In our game there may be only 12 or 14 unions who pay people or allow people to be paid.
"The International Board has put in place regulations that say the game is open. Open is open-ended, and therefore if the RFU was to declare itself an amateur rugby union it would not affect its membership of the International Board, because it would be exactly the same as the Croatian Rugby Union and Japanese Rugby Union and somewhere in the region of 57 rugby unions around the world."
Rowlands was more concerned at"the threat to the official game from entrepreneurs such as the Australian Ross Turnbull, who has attempted to buy up leading European players to be the clowns in a rebel circus.
"I would have serious concerns that the game worldwide is sufficiently organised or funded to resist serious overtures," he said. "I say that because the game worldwide is seriously under-funded. We are talking about 71 unions, 57 of whom have a major cash problem."
