Occasionally we all get bizarre mental images that refuse to go away, which might explain Liz Hurley's Brains, the decade's most misleadingly titled television programme, on Channel 4 the other night. Ever since the Rugby Football Union revealed that the rebuilt Twickenham will have six VIP hotel bedrooms with views of the pitch, some of us have had a similar problem.

In my mind's eye Clive Woodward now sits on the edge of the bed in his dress ing gown when England play, remote control poised for the TV replays. It is sad, obviously, but not a million miles removed from what Woodward and his lieutenants already spend their waking hours doing. If video killed the radio star, it is also giving a generation of rugby coaches sleepless nights.

Visual technology is the new drug of choice for anyone involved in professional sport and England are at the forefront of rugby's Gameboy revolution. No side takes the field these days without an encyclopaedic knowledge of how the opposition hooker throws in or whether the fly-half can kick with both feet. At Twickenham, though, Big Brother has now taken up permanent residence.

Did you know there are 12 fixed sensors high above the Twickenham pitch which monitor a player's every move, telling the coaches not only the precise distance he covers but the intensity of his runs and thus his work-rate?

By Monday morning the results are available to the management on a CD, all bluffers comprehensively unmasked. Woodward stresses this Prozone software, a variation on the system used by nine Premiership soccer clubs, does not win Test matches on its own but he is convinced nothing beats it anywhere on planet rugby.

As Tony Biscombe, the RFU's boffin-in-chief, puts it gleefully, "there is no hiding place" because every inch of pitch is covered. Biscombe has even rumbled some of the cannier players - step forward Will Greenwood - who have tried to outwit the system with subtle shuttle-runs or phoney 50-metre sprints in support of a distant try-scorer, thus boosting their yardage.

Woodward, though, prefers to stress the positive impact of the technology. "Historically rugby has spent a lot of time on coaching set pieces and very little on decision-making. This allows you to sit down with a player after the game and, in the cold light of day, really analyse what he was thinking and what the outcome was."

Such technology, of course, does not come cheap and therein lies the rub. Among the sweeteners behind the peace deal between clubs and the union is the notion of Prozone being available to the former. "I'd love to get all 12 Premiership clubs working on it because the knock-on effect would be massive," insisted Woodward yesterday, alive to the benefits of being able to assess any talented young English player at the press of a button. "I can't see there's any coach who wouldn't want it."

But what if the RFU cites the expense of building Clive's new bedroom and says no to Woodward's request for them to part-fund the project? Wise heads such as the former All Blacks coach Wayne Smith, now at Northampton, are not holding their breath. "Clive's shown me it and it's cutting edge but I don't know if it will ever happen," sighs Smith. "There seems to be a hell of a lot of bickering which can't be good for the game. In New Zealand every single Super 12 franchise and NPC team uses the same software programme. I would have thought that would be fundamental over here too."

Smith already spends up to four hours on a Sunday alone dissecting the previous day's game for video snippets - "It's as much an art as a science" - which might lend his team an edge. It was Clive James, not Clive Woodward, who published a book of TV reviews called Glued to the Box but Biscombe wants rugby to focus on new, flat-screen horizons. If the clubs get Prozone it would be good from the Premiership's point of view, because you'd be able to get information on everybody else. Then it becomes a bit like American football where the test is whether the coach can outwit his opposite number and change things."

With cricket having also jumped brazenly into bed with technology - damn, those bedroom flashbacks again - by referring lbws to the eye in the sky, there is no sign of the queue for the darkened room growing any shorter.

Those of us who grew up near the teenage Liz Hurley without once meeting her on the streets of Basingstoke rarely leave it these days anyway.