We're far more likely to bump into our idols in the serendipitous way the punters do, like I did last year when I quite literally bumped into Kiwi great Stacey Jones - one of my all-time favourites - at Steelers after the Australia-New Zealand Test at WIN Stadium.

After wiping some froth of his shirt, getting a photo and a quick chat, the little master went on his way. The talk among my fellow imbibers turned to how Jones would go today. My thoughts were that, of course, Jones would still kill it in the modern NRL, but he mightn't get that far.

READ MORE: Sims named to return against Sea Eagles

Were he a product of this generation, he'd have probably had his brilliance coached out of him. He'd have been told from his teens to "get us to the points on the field" or steer his side through "yardage" or "good-ball sets" dictated by precisely where the set begins.

Jones is close to the best "eyes up" player I've ever watched. There's so much talk these days of "eyes-up footy" but so few teams are coached in a way that fosters it. Players like Jones are taught to play with their eyes shut.

It's what's been brilliant about the impact rule changes have had on the game this season. It culminated in last Thursday's epic between the Storm and Roosters, a match in the top handful this column's ever witnessed.

Sure, Cameron Smith's golden-point penalty cost us the final leg of a handy multi but it was damn near impossible for any genuine league fan not enjoy the spectacle. It had it all, right down to the finish. Yes it was a bit sour to see a match like that decided by a penalty goal, but you could even find praise for Ashley Klein for making the ballsy call with the game on the line.

It was proof, again, that golden point is a cruel. Neither side deserved to go away with nothing - a draw would have been a perfectly satisfying outcome, but there ya go. What was interesting, was the way the new rules have come together to produce that contest, and others like it this season.

There's been a lot talk about the six-again call, in reality it's not a seismic shift. Dragons coach Paul McGregor put it simply last week when he said all it's really done is bring fatigue back into the game. It's also thrown teams that play a more structured style right out of whack.

In a lot of ways it's thrown the attacking team off more than the defensive. For some sides, it's tackle three, they're on the left edge scrum line where they were supposed to be - suddenly they have six more tackles they don't know what to do with.

Up until the last few weeks, that included the Storm, who have played structured footy for years, they've just done it impeccably and at speed. Others have tried to mimic it with less success, but the rules encouraged it.

For so long, the predictability of the six tackles, or the complete pause and reset via a penalty, has seen coaches impose strict structures on their footy sides. It made completion rates the gold standard. Go to any press conference and the losing coach, whoever it was, would inevitably point to completion rate as the determining factor.

It became the norm, so accepted that you needed reminding that's not the way footy is supposed to be played, not way Stacey Jones played it.

Completions still matter, but they're not the be all and and end all. Last Thursday, the Storm and Roosters made 28 errors between them. A day later the Dragons beat the Raiders in just about every statistical category and lost.

You look at average completion rates across the league and its' a mish-mash, some are losing while completing high, others are winning with low completion rates. In fact, you can look at any number of stats across the league and they tell you a different story.

One stat that might ordinarily go unnoticed is decoy runs. You wouldn't think that stat-line tells you much but it tells a compelling story in 2020. The number of decoys points to how may block plays and similar structured sets a team runs. The current leaders of decoy runs in the competition? The Bulldogs who are running last.

Sign up for Tackle Count, the NRL newsletter you need: Straight to your mailbox every Thursday before the footy kicks off

The trend plays out as you run down the list. It goes Tigers, Sea Eagles, Rabbitohs, Dragons, Sharks, Cowboys before you hit the Storm. Only three of the 'decoy run top eight' are in the actual top eight. Of those sides, the Sharks and Tigers and running seventh and eighth.

Who runs last for decoys? The Roosters, who've scored more points and more tries than any other team. Of the current top four sides, the Panthers (10th), Eels (12th), Knights (14th) are well down the list of decoys run. Only the Storm (8th) are mid-table.

Unlike most other categories, any team climbing up that ladder is drifting further and further away from the title. Block plays are a blight on the game. The biggest move the game has made in the past to try and get rid of them has been flawed adjustments to obstruction rules.

Like wrestling, the only way the game could really tackle it was to disincentivise it. It's done that by speeding up the game and reintroducing fatigue. The game needs to continue going down that track, a reduction in interchange should be next.

It'll face resistance from coaches, players, referees like the the six-again rule did. You can bet your house on coaches, probably the RLPA, trotting out injury stats and other rubbish about player welfare.

It was supposedly in the interests of player welfare for players like Jonathan Thurston, all 80-odd kilos of him, to be belted by a interchange of fresh 100-kilo-plus forwards every week

Peter V'landys stood firm on that and the six-again, was even willing to make adjustments on the run as coaches started to wise up and exploit the new rules at marker.

The NRL rule-makers need to continue to stay ahead of it, or risk losing the real treasures of our game, players like Stacey Jones.