"Defences are on top at the moment, " said Millar, explaining the IRB's reasoning. "We need to free the game up a bit, make it easier to play, easier to referee, easier to understand and we have to produce more options for the players. Those laws (Stellenbosch) are designed to make the game more exciting and to hand the game back to the players making decisions. The creation of space, keeping the ball in hands rather than in the air are things we want to encourage in the sport. In the experiments we've had under the new laws, the ball is played 10 per cent more of the time, more tries are being scored and the rugby has been a lot more exciting."

It is, though, a big ask of SANZAR, the Super 14's ruling body, principally because the laws are so experimental.

Since those initial trials with the students at Stellenbosch, largely amateur tournaments such the Scottish Super Cup (a Scottish club competition) and the English County Championship, as well as the slightly more professional Australian Rugby Championship, have trialled the new laws. All that hardly amounts to a wide-ranging experimentation process but after a highly unattractive and largely unimaginative World Cup, those in the upper echelons of the IRB feel it's time to put these law changes on the fast track.

Millar, when speaking on Monday, certainly sketched an attractive picture of what the new laws could mean and there's little doubt that if these experiments do ever become solid rugby law, the sport will change forever. What we can't be sure of, however, is whether that change will actually be for the better. Minor law changes in the past across a whole range of sports have been successful . . . the backpass rule in football for example . . . but the Stellenbosch Laws represent a fundamental rewrite rather than a new line here or there.

Of the law changes listed in the accompanying panel some, like the removal of the corner flags simply make common sense. The notion that teams can't pass the ball back into their own 22 just so they can kick it out on the full also seems pretty fair. As does the allowance for defending teams to legally pull down a rolling maul, providing, that is, IRB assurances that the law is completely safe prove correct.

The five-metre gap at scrums also appears, at first glance, to be entirely sensible. It's the remaining two experimental laws, though, that have the potential to change the game the most. The first one concerns the breakdown. At the moment, despite the increased competitiveness we've witnessed in the area over the past seven weeks, it's a mess, a point summed up neatly by ARU chief executive John O'Neill. "We have to demystify this game, " he said recently. "Even the gurus can't tell you. I've sat next to real rugby intellects and a penalty at the breakdown. . . no idea."

At present, there are 30 separate offences at the breakdown but these experimental laws are designed to make everything clearer. The first change concerns the offside line, which in these laws exists the moment a tackle takes place. The next person on the scene, from either side, will have to enter the tackle area through their own 'gate', behind the hindmost foot of their own player.

The other experimental law in this area allows any player on his feet at the breakdown to play or fight for the ball without getting pinged. This effectively means that the "handsoff" call doesn't exist anymore for any player not on the floor.

Having watched a couple of games with these laws in place, the breakdown has, at times, resembled two women fighting over a handbag, or a "bunfight" as Chris Latham, who has played two ARC games under the Stellenbosch rules, called it last week. But it does place much of the contest for the ball above the ground . . . where players, referees and spectators can see it . . . rather than on the floor below lots of bodies, where God himself only knows what's going on. Which brings us to the arguably the greatest change of all. By replacing the punishment for most offences from penalties to free-kicks (or long-arm penalties to short-arm penalties as the new laws officially call them), the IRB is changing the entire way in which rugby matches are decided. At the moment, and particularly at the highest level, the three points garnered from a successfully kicked penalty is the most common way of keeping the scoreboard ticking over. The thinking is that if most offences are down-graded to free-kicks rather than penalties, teams will have to put a greater emphasis on going for tries.

Take the World Cup final last weekend. The penalty that put South Africa 6-3 in front would have been only a freekick under the experimental rules had Alain Rolland decided that Lewis Moody's trip on Butch James was clumsy rather than deliberate. The kick that put the Boks 12-6 in front would also have been of the short-hand variety because Martin Corry was on his feet when Rolland shouted "hands-off". And the World Champions' final penalty . . .

awarded for Ben Kay's minor block on Os Du Randt . . . would also have been a free-kick under the experimental laws.

All of which means that to actually win the World Cup final, South Africa would have had to score a try from somewhere. Would that have lead to a more exciting spectacle last Saturday? You'd have to say it would.

There's also a crime and punishment argument. If free-kicks are awarded for every offence except offside, side-entry at a ruck and foul play, will there be enough of a deterrent for teams not to deliberately commit a range of other offences? Paddy O'Brien, in his very informative video on the subject, insists that because the new laws allow for persistent infringements to be punished with a penalty, teams will not be able to get away with bending the rules deliberately. For example, if a team is consistently crossing in midfield or holding onto the ball in the tackle, a penalty will be awarded, not a free-kick. He points out that some current penalty offences just have to be changed because they are skewing the outcome of games.

"If, for example, a player breaks off a scrum early, rather than a penalty that decides the match, it's a freekick, " says O'Brien, the IRB's Referees Manager. "We want players, not referees, deciding matches."

It's a nobel concept but the IRB need to be wary and sensible. "We've got to be careful we don't change the game just because we want entertainment, " says Eddie Jones, a coach fast becoming one of the wisest voices in the world game. "We'd be very, very foolish to look at changing to make the game like league. There's nothing wrong with the game.

We've had some fantastic games at the World Cup and we've had some arm wrestles, but when you're playing for a big prize you're sometimes going to play quite simple rugby. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. In Europe they don't care about the way rugby's played. If it's fast and free it's good, if it's tight and grinding that's good too."

Jones, like other rugby people out there, feels the IRB are being too reactive to a World Cup that although wasn't aesthetically pleasing, still contained plenty of intrigue.

The ball, however, is now firmly in SANZAR's court and the noises coming from the organisation suggest they'll officially ratify the use of the experimental laws in the Super 14 over the next few weeks.

Which could make the game up here in the northern hemisphere very different indeed. SANZAR is adamant that if they adopt the laws in time for the Super 14 this coming February, and providing the laws are then ratified at the IRB's council meeting in April, the tests against the European sides in June will have to be played under the new laws. Ireland face a test against both the All Blacks and Australia in the summer and as difficult as they might look right now, they'd be twice as tricky if the players had to adapt to a whole new game, particularly as their opponents will have had three months practice with the new laws.

There's a sense that the IRB might yet be able to fudge this issue but if everything goes to plan in the next few weeks the start of the 2008/09 rugby season will see the Stellenbosch Laws simply become "The Laws" right across the globe.