MURRAYFIELD star-maker Steve Gemmell is predicting faster and more spectator-friendly rugby next season when a raft of experimental law changes are universally introduced.
Following extensive trials, including during the 2006-07 Super Cup in Scotland, bosses have decreed innovations including players being forced to stay five metres back at scrums.
Also, there will be handling allowed in rucks while mauls may now be
collapsed.
Gemmell, head of the SRU's national academy, says a knock-on effect will be a requirement to turn out players built more for speed.
He says: "We will need to look at the type of players we produce. The game becoming faster is not a negative.
"Having players five yards back will create a bit of space.
"(So) rugby is going to become faster but, at the same time, physicality will still be important because open-side wing forwards, in particular, will still be subject to the biggest collisions.
"You could see old fashioned, buzz-bomb type of players coming back into the game but players might be exposed more to one-on-one confrontations, so we will have to be preparing for that."
Gemmell, who will also be in charge of the national sevens team in the Emirates Airlines international tournament in Edinburgh at the end of this month as well as assisting Scotland A during this summer's Churchill Cup in North America, says he will need to have discussions with Capital pro team coach Andy Robinson to consider the impact of the law changes.
"We will want to sit down as an academy group and have a look at what we have to produce in working closely with Andy Robinson and Sean Lineen (Glasgow].
"It will be about producing professionals and assisting players lower down the scale who are being helped by their local Institute of Sport.
"There will continue to be a need to help players try to come up through the pro teams and go all the way to the top."
"People are saying the shape of players will change depending on what happens, but there will still be room for competition.
"That is what the game should be about – competition across the pitch, whether in scrums, at re-starts or in line-outs. We all want it to remain rugby union, which needs competition in all aspects, whereas rugby league has less of it."
Overall, Gemmell welcomed the changes, saying: "Rugby has moved on and expectations of spectators have increased.
"The whole point of what they are about is making the game easier to understand from the layman's point of view and making it more open and exciting."
Not everyone in Scottish rugby is so optimistic, however, and the Broughton club website is seeking feedback from members in raising concerns, saying: "Down in the national league and regional leagues the changes may make the 22-stone beer-swilling prop extinct, with rugby union's unique selling point of being a game for all shapes and sizes dangerously close to disappearing down the pan.
"Will the down-sizing of penalties to free kicks for technical offences now mean that Scotland have no chance of points on the board in the next Six Nations Championship?
"Why not make scrums a way of restarting games, a la rugby league?"
What is becoming increasingly clear, though, is the distinction that exists between the grassroots "player's game" and the spectator sport that rugby has become at the opposite end of the scale.
The full article contains 588 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
