We must find a way to stop vicious spiral

HEAVEN knows The Rugby Paper has been warning of a Domesday scenario for Premiership rugby for a decade or more so the calamitous events of the last nine months with three Premiership clubs going under should not come as a surprise

- BRENDAN GALLAGHER

It is possible however to get too close to a situation which is why I took careful note of a pertinent comment by Damian Green, MP for Ashford, who chaired the House of Commons Select committee which compiled a report recently on the grave state of English club rugby. He had no skin in the game and the advantage of objectivity.

“Is it possible that the attempt to turn club rugby into a professional game in this country ran before it could walk? Things got too ambitious and people have spent too much money. Are we trying to support an infrastructure which there just isn’t enough demand for; that there is not enough TV revenue, not enough gate revenue, not enough of all the ancillary revenues to support the kind of institutions we have set up.”

That seems to me a pretty fair summation of the mess we are in.