They would be playing at a different level anyway. There is a ‘top level’ of the amateur structure, a point at which you have progressed as far as you can. So adding another level on top of that wouldn’t have the effect you are describing.

Besides we are talking about junior levels which by their very nature are transient. U15’s are only UI15s for 1 year.

The change from 5m to 10m was because defences started getting up too quickly. I don't think it's made more space. If anything, there is less time and space nowadays because of the focus on defences getting up. If I watch RL from the olden days, defences didn't move up quickly and let attackers come to them.

Some of the attacking moves from those days seemed quite poor compared to what you see even in the amateurs and juniors nowadays. We see much more use of support play (one alongside and one out the back) and dummy runners nowadays.

If I was coaching and the rule changed to five metres rather than ten, I'd focus my coaching on linespeed. If we had that working quickly from just five metres back, we could create significant pressure, force errors and from there get good field position. On attack, to limit the exposure to that pressure, we'd play very safe, focussing on jumping from acting half and getting the acting half to the first defender with a support player before the second defender could close that gap.

So a (very) negative effect.

When I played primary school RL in York 20 odd years ago they had a pretty good set of rules in my opinion.

It was 10-a-side (missed out 2 centres and the loose forward, though you could do other combinations).
3 points for a try if there were fewer than 3 passes in the play. 5 points if more than 3.
It'd be a turnover if the acting half was tackled with the ball.

A couple of simple changes led to much more focus on passing and handling.

That's just the kind of mini-game we try to run as part of coaching now, although smaller sided, short duration during a session. Then there are all sorts of variations of rules. I found these could be good for halfbacks and some players, but the downside would be other players would revert to type. Just a case of different players responding to different coaching methods I guess.

' Elitism ' , just what the junior game needs

Yep it's what we do and have been doing for years. Fortunately Leeds are pushing it hard now so hopefully it might get through to some.

The good thing with that example I gave in York was that that was the league rules. So it meant each team was practising that set of rules instead of just the teams with "good" coaches. Admittedly it was only a small league structure (8 teams in total if I remember correctly), but with 10-a-side teams it meant everyone had to be able to pass to an ok standard (as much as you could with a school team) and we even got a few scrum moves going! Only basic like a run around or bringing the full back in to the line but without those rules it would have been more tempting to put a big fast lad at 1st receiver instead.