Yes, I know it is commonly accepted that it's healthy to interact with others, maybe even speak to them. But why make small talk with someone when you have the option of watching replays of four-decade-old rugby Test matches? 

That was my quandary recently. For about 30 seconds. 

I did suggest the dream date but inexplicably my house guest wasn't keen to join me in a dark room for eight hours staring at old rugby footage ... or in a dark room - period, I suspect, but I digress. 

I was on a mission and not just to offend people who care about me. Sparked by a recent visit to Nelson, the birthplace of New Zealand rugby and one of the host communities for the Rugby World Cup, I wanted to remind myself of how the game has changed over the years; if not back to 1870, then in recent history. 

Relying on memory, particularly one addled by years of post-match drinks, isn't the best method. The game I played and watched decades ago seems very similar in my mind's eye to the blistering, ball-in-hand Queensland Reds' approach in 2011, but truth be told, it's vastly different (although I seem to recall I had a step not unlike Quade's). 

You still get old bastards like me occasionally hankering after "the good old days" and if you prefer your sport ‘no nonsense' without excessive preening, showboating and hooey, we've probably got a point. Otherwise, however, just tell us to shut it. 

I'm not going to start dribbling on about how much better or worse the players were: a great player from one era would likely be a great player in another. And a riveting game in 1950, 1972 or 1985 is still compelling today. 

Yet, the changes over the last 30 years, in particular, have been drastic and overwhelmingly, I believe, positive. 

One very important exception is scrummaging. The biggest blight on contemporary rugby is the lunacy of launching two 900 kg bundles of meat and bones at each other and expecting them not to collapse in a heap. 

Watch the third Test at Eden Park between the Wallabies and the All Blacks in 1972 or the British Lions v New Zealand in 1977, even the sinfully good Wallabies of the mid ‘80s and you'll notice how blessedly different the scrummaging is to the contemporary "touch, pause, engage" farce. 

Back then, to varying degrees, the packs would assemble quickly and come together swiftly in an engagement not unlike two wrestlers at the start of a bout. The front row clashes were intense but not suicidal. The scrum contest - the pushing, shoving and cheating - didn't start in all its glory until the ball was in the tunnel. 

In other words, the crucial contest was not at impact but in the scramble for possession: the pursuit of the pill, which is what the sport is largely about. The adjudication of the scrum was a clear-cut process (crooked feeds were penalised and most collapses had an obvious culprit), while the forward pack with the ascendency was rewarded no less than they are today in terms of territorial and psychological dominance over the opposition. 

As an Australian, the minute you raise the issue of scrums you get shouted down by our overseas friends anxious to remind you of the time Al Baxter was propelled 100 metres backwards, or the like. 

We are perceived to have less powerful tight forwards so any Australian proposal to change the current abomination that is scrummaging is interpreted as our desire to undermine the strength of other teams and an insult to the glory of the traditional ‘hard-nosed‘ contest. 

But a viewing of several tests from the late 70s and into the 80s when most teams were having more success chasing shadows than the All Blacks or later were being dazzled by an unmatched Australian backline, is a stark reminder that scrummaging has only been this insane, on-field version of a car accident for a very short while -- before that it was a more intriguing wrangling contest (and the Wallabies were crap at that, too). 

So I say bring back the old scrum, but tell them they can keep their lineout. 

Even up until the 90s, the lineout was a messy debacle. Covering the Wallabies and All Blacks in South Africa when the Springboks came out of official rugby isolation in 1992, one of the most striking things - apart from the disturbing defiance of the crowd singing the banned anthem Die Stem at Ellis Park - was the way the home team contested the lineout. 

Lifting was an accepted part of the game in South Africa, whereby our blokes were used to launching themselves vertically without a burly front rower giving them a wedgie to propel them skyward. Obviously things changed quickly, globally - lessons were learned, laws tweaked, wedgies tolerated. The incentive to kick was reduced: the safety of the sideline and the option of gambling on a lineout (as opposed to running the ball) became less attractive as the lineout became less of a lottery. 

In fact, the most jarring difference between the game then and now is the kicking. As much as we like to moan about how the 2011 Waratahs kick too much, they don't hold a candle to the boot-the-stitches off the ball approach of a mere 35 years ago. 

Of course, there have been great ball runners for 150 years, but watching a string of games from the 70s, I couldn't help but think that large slabs of play had more in common with Australian rules football than contemporary ball-in-hand rugby. 

The battle for possession was more fluid, scrappy: kicking wasn't the second thing many players thought about it was clearly the first and foremost method of attack and defence for some. 

I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise: the games share common origins. Indeed, according to the former New Zealand Rugby Union official historian Arthur Swan, the precursor to that first game of ‘rugby' in Nelson in 1870 was two years of hybrid games played under a mixture of Association (soccer) and Melbourne rules (Australian rules). 

Charles Monro set them straight. Having returned to Nelson after being schooled in England he advocated rugby football. A team from the town and one from  Nelson College assembled at the Botanical Reserve for the first outing on Saturday May 14, 1870. 

Yet the game, played between teams of 18-a-side, was dominated by kicking and the method of scoring was goals not tries. Picking it up and running with it, as William Webb Ellis had done at rugby college in 1823 was a comparative rarity. 

As the Colonist newspaper noted in its report of the match: After multiple kick exchanges: "Now some player runs with it, and a general scrimmage ensues; it is all shove, pull, rush and roll about in a confused mass till ‘down' is cried, and away the ball goes again till perchance it gets in touch or caught." 

Cynics might suggest the 2007 World Cup tournament based in France harked back to the old days - maybe not to the 1870s but the 1970s. Certainly the dominance of kicking at that tournament was a reminder of an unattractive aspect of retro-rugby. 

In New Zealand in September and October, things should be vastly different as attacking play has become mandatory for leading teams again recent years. 

But don't be dismayed if you hanker after a celebration of "the boot" and a reminder of the good old (old) days. There will be something for you at this Cup. 

On September 20, Nelson will stage a re-enactment of that 1870 game before the first of three World Cup fixtures the city will host (including Australia v Russia on October 1).

And that is where the old game belongs, as an exhibition that celebrates history and cheerfully reflects on the way things ‘used' to be. 

(Greg Truman travelled to New Zealand as a guest of Tourism NZ and Emirates Airlines. The IRB rugby World Cup begins on September 9; for booking and other travel information contact: www.newzealand.com and www.emirates.com.)