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Law innovations to be trialled in Sky Super Rugby Aotearoa were a continuation of exploring ways to speed up the game.
New Zealand Rugby s (NZR) Head of High Performance Mike Anthony said speeding up the game had been one of the objectives behind the initiatives.
Statistics from Australia s Super Rugby AU competition last year where the goal line drop-out featured was that there was on average 78 seconds difference between the time taken for a five-metre scrum versus the time taken for a goal line drop-out.
Statistics from Super Rugby AU showed on average it took 1min 52sec to take a five-metre scrum with defensive teams regularly taking longer to prepare. By comparison, a goal-line dropout took about 30 seconds on average.