Italy made the most of a loophole in breakdown laws against England, ensuring they didn’t commit multiple players to a breakdown, meaning a ruck was never formed and thus there was no offside line. The gap in the law has been noticed by the game's administrators and New Zealand trialled a law interpretation to combat the grey area in its provincial competition last season, though it was not adopted in 2017. It’s a move the Chiefs have used in Super Rugby in recent times but Phipps said it’s by no means a silver bullet. “That’s a tactic used sparingly around the place,” he said from South Africa. “There’s a good and bad to both sides of the tactic. It unsettles teams but it leaves a lot of holes in the breakdown, when you’re shooting off down the line. “I don’t know where it’ll lead now - I know Eddie Jones didn’t like it. “It wouldn’t be good to see it as a continuous sort of thing but for them (Italy) it was a great tactic and had them right in it (