Gallagher Premiership Rugby kicks off on Friday at Ashton Gate with a significant number of new player welfare driven initiatives and research projects, and a raft of new World Rugby law trials.
In addition to the new commitments to player welfare Premiership Rugby will be trialling a number of welfare-driven law trials:
50:22: This law trial is intended to create space via a tactical choice for players to drop out of the defensive line in order to prevent their opponents from kicking for touch, reducing impact of defensive line speed
Goal-line drop-out: This law trial is intended to reduce the number of scrums, reward good defence, encourage counter-attacking and increase the rate of ball in play
Pre-bound pods of players: Outlawing the practice of pods of three or more players being pre-bound prior to receiving the ball – the sanction will be a penalty kick