KEY POINTS:
The IRB's ELVs are roaring into view, like an SUV charging along SH1 towards the CBD.
Are rugby's grandiosely titled "experimental law variations" headed for a parade in the middle of town, a dunking in the harbour, or a nondescript place in a queue of changes to rugby
over the years?
Will this be a revolution - good or bad - or part of rugby's evolution?
Sport is full of rule-changing moments that were good, bad and ugly. Often, their full effect can only be seen over time.
Nothing beats the use of gloves in boxing for changing a sport forever. Without padded knuckles, boxing would have had a limited lifespan, like many of its bare-knuckled exponents.
The celebrated, adored, John L Sullivan from Boston was heavyweight boxing's last bare-fisted champion. Sullivan fell to the trappings of fame that have dogged plenty of his successors and he developed a layer of natural padding around his stomach.
In 1892, clever "Gentleman" Jim Corbett, from America's West Coast, destroyed the puffing Sullivan in what, for those days, was a mere 21 rounds to become boxing's first gloved heavyweight champion under the Marquis of Queensberry rules.
Boxing had been a rough-house scrap until then, and the new rules, and Corbett himself, did much to veer it towards respectability, although it is difficult to work out where characters such as Sonny Liston, Don King and Mike Tyson fit in this evolutionary tale.
Cricket has had many significant rule-change moments and the one which a large section of spectators would regard as the most crucial came when they were prevented from carrying truckloads of their own beer through the turnstiles.
Having to line up to buy your beer at inflated prices in plastic cups changed cricket forever, especially after the tea break.
Apart from that, it's hard to go past the leg before wicket rule - introduced in 1774 and modified many times - as the most significant game-changer in cricket.
LBW sorts out the good batters from the bad. Being unable to protect your wicket by any means has ruined many budding careers, and cricket would be a very different game without the LBW law.
The most vital rule change in rugby union came in the mid 1990s, when players were allowed to be paid via their bank account rather than having to fish wads of cash from out of their boots. Until then, one of the most significant rules in rugby had been the amateur one which resulted in the creation of rugby league, which in turn allowed rugby union to snare a few players who could tackle properly.
Rugby league's big moment came in the early 1990s, when an unlimited interchange rule - later modified - was adopted. For much of rugby league's history, players were only allowed to leave the field if suffering a life-threatening injury, and even then this was regarded as a poor excuse.
The interchange system has affected the game in many ways. Unfortunately, rugby league's new-found worker ant mentality has taken a lot of personality out of the game, although in the case of Willie Mason this isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Many would point to the introduction of a limited tackle rule in the late-1960s as modern rugby league's defining moment, although those who have studied old tapes claim that teams didn't carry the ball for much longer than five or six tackles anyway.
This may have been because rugby league in those days was played with leather balls on fields that were often one step removed from being swamps. In the case of Carlaw Park, you can remove the "one step removed" part.
There is very little scope for rule debates in soccer. There are only two basic rules in the game anyway - you can't touch the ball with your hand and don't argue with Sepp Blatter.
Apart from the killjoys who didn't like the somersault throw-in, soccer's greatest law debate has centred on the offside call. But there has been no defining moment in this, so most of the crucial arguments have been about real laws such as whether certain groups of Englishmen should be allowed out of the country at the same time as their national team.
A lot of sports have been changed drastically by rules preventing the use of performance enhancing - and reducing - drugs.
In the good old days, around the time of the happy-clappy 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch, we all thought that weightlifters powered up on a diet of three steaks, two chickens, a dozen eggs, a field of potatoes and three blocks of cheese - and that was only morning tea.
Little did we know that they were using dastardly substances, and to be fair to the weightlifters they probably didn't know they were dastardly at the time. Steroids were just an innocent way of being able to train harder and eat more chickens.
We've been reading all about drugs in sport ever since - weightlifting, cycling, athletics, cycling, league, cycling. Since the introduction of drug rules, drugs have ruled many sports.
In basketball, big people have led to big rule changes. Basketball has included rules named after men such as George Mikan, Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Some of these rules have lasted and had a great effect on the game including those designed 50 years ago to counter the dominance of the bespectacled Mikan, the first superstar centre with skill to match his size.
Both Mikan and Abdul-Jabbar developed hook shots to counter the new rules designed to limit their dominance. But whereas the Mikan rules became a part of basketball's development, college basketball scrapped the no-dunking rule inspired by Lew Alcindor (as Abdul-Jabbar was called then) as soon he left school.
Rule changes come and some of them go. One-day cricket's power play is probably here to stay, but the supersub rule introduced at the same time was quickly, and quietly, scrapped.
Rugby league's initial free interchange rule was a response to concerns about blood-carried diseases. The rule came and went, came again, and then became an integral part of league in a restricted form. The interchange has undergone yet another alteration prior to the 2008 NRL season.
Sport's rule changes are a moveable feast. Rugby's ELVs are TBC - to be confirmed and to be continued.
PERFECT WORLD
Chris Rattue on the ELVs they should have introduced:
* Eliminate drop goals: The All Blacks have selflessly blazed a trail for everyone to follow, putting the entertainment factor before all else.
* Extra points when wingers score tries: This could revolutionise the game in the northern hemisphere.
* A clean field policy immediately after every game. This is the easiest way of wiping out the scourge of rugby - TV's post match interviews.
* Referee incentives: The old parking warden perk in reverse - a case of wine for every match penalty count less than 20 and a pallet load for under 15.
* Halfbacks can feed scrums under the second row: The quicker the ball goes in, the easier it comes out and abracadabra, fewer collapsed scrums (except for Australian ones).
* Have linesmen throw the ball into lineouts a la Aussie Rules starts and basketball tipoffs - along with no lineout penalties. Sounds like fun and hey, these are experimental.
