But Pulver, who sits on World Rugby's Regulations committee and has returned this week from meetings in Argentina, said there was no appetite for change in Australia or much of the Southern Hemisphere.

"In Australia I'd be concerned that if we pushed three years out to something greater than that we'd be playing into the hands of rugby league and other codes who would be picking them up immediately and don't have international eligibility regulations to deal with," he said.

"In Australia the government lets you become a citizen in four years, so it would be a pretty bizarre scenario where you could be allowed by the government to be a citizen of the country but not allowed to play for their team.

"And to me a far bigger issue that World Rugby should be collectively dealing with is that the French and English clubs are raiding all of our countries of our players, which is having an incredibly disruptive impact on domestic competitions around the world."

The NRL recently relaxed its Test eligibility rules to allow a player to represent a tier two nation if they were not picked by one of the three major nations of Australia, New Zealand and England. The change means that Jarryd Hayne, for example, could play for Fiji, the country of his father's birth, if he is overlooked for Kangaroos duty, without it affecting future Kangaroos involvement.