Heads out of the bunker chaps and point the way!

Lady Godiva’s dress-down ride through Coventry; Sir Thomas Fairfax’s rout of the Royalist forces south of Bristol; the first stirrings of the Battle of Britain; the attack on the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland: all things considered, the 10th day of July had more than its share of historical resonance even before Darren Childs addressed the rugby nation.

- CHRIS HEWETT

For month after pandemic-blighted month – 109 days according to The Sun newspaper, which was keeping count – the Premiership Rugby chief executive’s approach to public relations was marginally less proactive than Lord Lucan’s. The sport was in freefall, yet the man paid handsomely to run it was keeping schtum about where and when it might land.

When Childs finally emerged from his own lockdown, he offered precious little hard information. Why so elusive in the first place? If he had nothing to say, he could have said it in late March or mid-April and spared himself a torrent of criticism instead of appearing to treat the English rugby public with disdain.

But then, Premiership Rugby does not have a monopoly on non-communication. The sound of silence is to be heard virtually everywhere, and it is deafening.

World Rugby, the non-governing governing body, is hardly lacking in self-importance: its Press releases about experimental law changes read like Papal Bulls and might as well be written in Latin. But in reality, it does not know which way is up.