England's leading clubs are to follow the lead of rugby league by introducing a sin-bin for any cynical attempts to prevent tries or deliberate infringement such as killing the ball. The league season kicks off on Saturday week when Bath play Newcastle, newly promoted to the First Division, at the Recreation Ground. Allied Dunbar's sponsorship of the league is worth £12 million over three years.

In this experiment the Premiership players will still receive yellow and red cards and there will be warnings from referees for players or sides before offenders are sent to the sin-bin.

Kim Deshayes, the chief executive of the English Rugby Partnership, the body now running the top two divisions, said: "There is unanimous support for sin-bin experiments and we have discussed it with the RFU. It will be primarily to prevent the illegal stopping of tries and killing the ball."

The Premiership will also introduce a 10-minute half-time break and, for the first time, prize money will be given to successful clubs. The champions will receive £60,000 and the runners-up £30,000.

It will also repeat last year's experiment of home and away playoffs to decide relegation and promotion between the first and second divisions while the bottom two second division clubs will be automatically relegated. Deshayes said: "Many clubs will play on Sundays to encourage families to watch matches and there will be a live game on Sky each Saturday."

One innovation Sky, which is beginning its fourth season televising club games, will introduce at Bath, the first of the satellite broadcasters 32 live games, will be the airship that helped film Arsenal's game against Coventry City on Monday night.

One high-tech innovation the Premiership is introducing, though, is an Internet site for the public and an additional site for the media.

So, 175 seasons on from when the game was founded we have moved from William Webb Ellis to the Web.