Clubs will disappear Grassroots rugby still crying out for help in shadow of Six Nations riches

ou may have noticed that the sports pages are less, well, sporty than they once were.

- Robert Kitson

There is rather more chance of reading stern-faced stories about Sir Jim Ratcliffe and the Glazers or Manchester City's latest legal dispute than, say, the muddy winter joys of grassroots rugby union. It is the way of the modern world and, anyway, England playing Scotland in the Six Nations this Saturday is a bigger deal, right? Well, yes and no.

If you are counting the beans inside the Rugby Football Union's offices in Twickenham there is barely a contest. The Six Nations annually bankrolls the rest of the domestic game: it is the commercial goose that lays the golden Gilbert-shaped eggs. Never mind the scoreboard, let's keep the corporate guests well fed and watered. It's all about the bottom line.

In more modest clubhouses up and down the country everyone recognises this reality. Because, if they are to prosper themselves, they also have to keep the lights on, the pitches in order and toilets working. In theory, all that money banked at the top of the pyramid filters down for the greater post-Covid good. In return the grassroots clubs keep rugby's flame alight in places where RFU executives seldom tread.