If the NRL All Stars are exposed by new scrum rules in Friday night’s Gold Coast clash, they only have themselves to blame – sort of.

Coach Wayne Bennett revealed the NRL All Stars’ inaugural captain Darren Lockyer had come up with the radical experiment that an out-sized Indigenous team was pinning its hopes on for an upset win.

Among the new rules trialled on Friday night, each scrum will be centred in the middle of the park.

The attacking team can feed the ball from either side, and locks don’t have to be binded to the scrum.

Bennett said his team would be wary of how the Indigenous team’s brilliant backline used the tactic against his monster pack.

“It will be interesting. It might be good – that’s a Darren Lockyer idea actually,” he said of Broncos legend Lockyer who is now a member of the NRL’s rules-and-competition committee.

Bennett expected an Indigenous backline boasting the likes of Johnathan Thurston, Greg Inglis and Ben Barba to also make the most of the new 40m kick rule.

Under the revamped 40-20 rule trialled on Friday night, any kick of 40m or more which finds touch will grant possession to the attacking team.

Of the 40m rule, Bennett said: “It won’t be hard to officiate but it will be hard to defend.

“I think there will be a lot of guys trying to find the line tomorrow night because there will be a reward for it.”

Indigenous coach Laurie Daley made no bones about how his side without a representative forward would approach Friday night’s match.

“I don’t mind the rules. I think the scrums will be a good one in particular for us,” Daley said.

“We’ve got a fairly fast backline and the guys will certainly enjoy that extra space, they’ve been working on a few plays at training so we’ll see how it goes.”

Daley said the unlimited interchange would also work to their advantage as the likes of largely untested forwards David Fifita, Tyson Andrews and Kierran Moseley prepared for their greatest challenge to date.

“They don’t play a lot of first grade, so (they must) go out there and show people what you’re capable of doing,” he said.

“We’ll have to roll through them (interchange) pretty quickly, because they’ve got plenty of big forwards on the bench and they’ll all be getting plenty of time so our guys are going to have to work extremely hard in the middle.”