KEY POINTS:
A revolution beckons at Eden Park on Saturday night. The final game in this year's Tri-Nations rugby extravaganza might be the last test match as we know it on our soil.
Yes, the Stellenbosch Laws await, like a gleaming new car on the lot.
And we all know what can happen to a gleaming new car. First, it loses a fortune the moment the salesman slams his book shut on the deal. Then the windscreen-wipers don't work. Four weeks later, it's part of a worldwide recall.
There are undoubtedly a fair few readings of the new rugby rules to go in the IRB parliament, so it's not a done deal. Rugby wouldn't be rugby without a decent chinwag down in the bunker somewhere. But the new rules appear to be on the cards.
It has been challenging, wondering if the glorious new Stellenbosch Laws would see the light of day. Then John O'Neill arrived back on the scene and took up the cause.
Since O'Neill normally gets what he wants, let's assume that some or all of them are on the way next year.
What a remarkable story this mission to simplify rugby has been.
This is, it has to be said, simplification rugby style: the eight proposed law variations involve a mere 29 clauses, not to mention a handful of sub-clauses. They run to a piffling 700 words, boosted by 11 words needed to describe a dead ball corner post. To recap, some of rugby's finest brains (not my words) were put in charge. This wee group included Australian Rod Macqueen, Frenchman Pierre Villepreux, South African Ian McIntosh, New Zealand's Paddy O'Brien, someone called Richie Dixon from Scotland and a couple of other IRB sorts who are even less famous than Dixon. In the grandiose IRB tradition, they were named the Law Project Group.
Initially, the proposed changes were known as the ELVs, which sounds like a type of family vehicle that you could drive straight up the side of Mt Cook. In fact, an ELV is an Experimental Law Variation.
The LPG then tested the ELVs at "the rugby laboratory at Stellenbosch University" as one of the IRB LPG honchos put it.
Latching on to this, an Australian commentator re-named the ELVs the Stellenbosch Laws. Presumably, this guy comes from the same gene pool as the bloke who named all New Zealand rugby grounds Rugby Park. But back to the story.
The LPG trialled the ELVs in Scottish club rugby this year, presumably on the basis that if they failed miserably no one would know the difference.
They will now get a whirl in the new Australian championship and our NPC second division.
Rugby might struggle with its test programme but it can sure run a testing programme.
And yet, two years after they were mooted, there are so many unanswered questions.
First and foremost, who the heck is Richie Dixon? And second, what does a rugby laboratory look like?
Actually, Dixon used to coach Scotland. But as for a rugby laboratory in South Africa, one hates to think. Did they use a Bunsen burner to set the rugby rule book alight? Is the lab a cluster of huts like the ones used to crack the Enigma Code? Is the rugby laboratory, perhaps, responsible for Butch James? Maybe it invented the neck of Kobus Wiese?
Truth be known, the rugby laboratory is probably an old broom cupboard stuffed full of corner flags and a couple of Danie Craven's books. But "rugby laboratory" has a nice ring to it, especially when you're after government funding.
The result of this extensive, exhaustive, worldwide campaign to make rugby more interesting was a suggestion that the game move the corner flags back, allow hands in the ruck, reduce the number of full penalty offences, permit the collapsing of mauls, allow as many people as you like in lineouts, turn touch judges into "flag referees", further reduce the ability to kick out on the full with impunity and push backlines back from scrums.
If only we knew more about what went on at Stellenbosch. For instance, did they gather a group of students together, tell them that they had these snazzy new laws to jazz the game up, and set them loose on a field with love in the heart?
Or did the boffins mimic real life, pretend they were real rugby coaches again, and tell a group of players they had these snazzy new laws and had already designed ways to stuff them up.
Surely more would be achieved in the name of entertaining and interesting rugby by banning Butch James from playing at first five-eighths, holding the staged press conferences in sealed containers and outlawing old-age pensioners from playing for England. Rugby might even win a friends by ceasing to trumpet bogus test teams.
Admittedly, though, these would be a lot harder to implement than moving the corner flags.
Collapsed mauls, hands in the ruck and lineout riots do have potential, although for what I'm not sure. Reducing the number of full penalty offences sounds like a tempting invitation to commit more offences. Not only will the great rugby nations of the world play for the Webb Ellis Cup, they may end up playing the Webb Ellis game.
It's a great rugby tradition to moan about the rules, so this rates as a pre-emptive strike.
But the LPG's ELVs seem likely to encourage a game where the prime tactic will involve putting up bombs that land just outside the 22, grabbing the bloke who receives the ball, forming a maul, then collapsing it.
Cynical eh - me and the game.
It's not just that time will tell with this. It's time in the top echelons that will tell, as it has with other rule changes. What looks good in a laboratory doesn't always come out the same in real life. Cause and effect often rules in rugby rather than the rules themselves.
There is also the worrying thought that the McFiggis brothers from the East Fyfe Old Academicals may have utilised the ELVs less destructively during the Scottish test-tube period compared to when Schalk Burger, Richie McCaw etc get their hands on them. Just a thought, mind you.
Good luck to the rugby bigwigs on this: they might be on to something. Then again, I fear too many people are trying to find perfection in a game that is - by its madcap nature - charmingly imperfect at its best. It's not supposed to be a pitter-patter game.
There is actually some beauty and drama in those brutal, collapsed scrums and the like. More changes might equal more confusion.
Finally, and most importantly, remember that you may be watching test rugby as you know it in this country for the last time on Saturday night. For better or for worse.
