“If you just take the international game in isolation. Commercially playing that few times a year actually generates more value that playing lots of time a year because scarcity does drive value, and drives the premium prices we are able to charge. Even now, we are still able to do that.

“We have two-and-a-half million people trying to buy a ticket for the autumn internationals. You have got that demand there. If that was 30 times a year you would probably lose value if you overdid it.

“There is something in that model that says less is more. If you talk about a player welfare issue, our commercial and player welfare ambitions can be aligned.”

Brown said the RFU was the injury data currently being collected could lead to a re-evaluation of the maximum number of games that an international is allowed to play each year, which currently stands at 32.

“When we look at stats, we currently have 32-game equivalents maximum for an international standard player,” Brown added. “Our guys are averaging about 20 at the moment, but even that might be too many. (It is) Particularly challenging in a Lions year.

“There is situation where we need to look collectively at how much rugby is played. But I actually think it is probably a group of about 50 players that do the most playing and we can probably name them all now and I think that is where we could get much more sophisticated with all the data that we now have.