It sounds wrong, but segregating crowds could be a great idea

Colour and passion of banks of supporters are the only part of French rugby worth importing

sit time to take aim at one of rugby’s sacred cows and ask whether it is worth introducing segregation into the Aviva Premiership?

I was asked that very question on Sunday night by Nick Mullins, the velvet voice of rugby, after Clermont Auvergne’s 29-9 victory over Toulon at a raucous, bouncing Stade Marcel Michelin. Instinctively, I disagreed. One of the fundamental tenets of watching rugby is being able to sit next to, and share a beer with, an opposition supporter.

Yet it is hard to deny that English club rugby lags a long way behind the French in terms of atmosphere. Attending a match at the Stade Marcel Michelin should be on the bucket list for every rugby supporter. The noise, the colour, the passion are just off the scale. There was no need for flamethrowers, deafening music or an over-enthusiastic stadium announcer. The whole game was electrified by the crowd rather than the other way around.

Away supporters do travel in English rugby, but very often they are dispersed among the home fans so it is hard for them to add that noise and colour. If you could reserve part of one stand for away supporters, I agree with Mullins that it would add to the spectacle.

Maybe segregation is the wrong word because that invokes images of how football crowds are managed. You would not need a line of stewards, and of course fans would still be free to sit where they want, but if you had a single bank of supporters that would encourage a lot more singing, colour and noise. After the game you could just as easily share a beer with the home support.

The atmosphere aside, there is very little you would want to import from the French league into English rugby. I find it astonishing that a league that generates twice as much television revenue as the Premiership (about £76 million a year v £38million) and seven times what the Pro12 receives can produce such an inferior product.

With all this money sloshing around, owners spend ridiculous sums on players with the attitude that if they spend top dollar they should expect the world in return. Yet the whole set-up of French rugby seems geared towards getting the worst rather than best out of their players. Their season runs from early August until June if their team go all the way. They are flogged like carthorses. You see the size of some of these players and they cannot be fit, but they are just conditioned for this attritional slog. Take Ma’a Nonu. He was one of the players of the tournament at