More than half of NRL play-makers say they don’t expect the new two-point field goal to have an impact on games, believing it will suffer the same fate as last year’s 20-40 rule.

Rule changes have dominated talk in the lead-up to this year’s season, with the majority of the focus on the reduction in scrums and introduction of set restarts for offside to speed up the game.

They come after last season’s return to one referee and implementation of set restarts for ruck infringements, as well as the 20-40 kick that was not successfully pulled off once.

But it is the two-point field goal for those kicks from the beyond the 40-metre line which shapes as the biggest change to the game’s fabric in 2021.

Despite several changes in rule applications and interpretations, not since 1983 has the point-scoring system changed in rugby league when tries went from three to four points.

The change revealed in December surprised several players, not least because just one field goal from Michael Morgan was kicked from outside the 40-metre line last year.