This is a series about the future of sport — which, when you consider rugby union, drives home a point. It seems that we are always talking about the future of rugby. There may have never been a time in rugby history when more administrators and more media have been asking themselves this very question: what is the future going to look like?

Like many sports, rugby is in a state of slow but constant evolution. It is a cliché to point out that the game today looks pretty different to the game of 20 years ago. Or that the game of 1997 looked different to that of 1977. In researching this story, I have been asking myself: are the coming changes just part of