Premiership must learn from folly of English football

WHICH Premiership club will follow Arsenal and be the first to field a team 100 per cent nonqualified for England.

I agree with David Hancock`s “nurturing” comments of two weeks’ ago. A recent study shows that of 546 Premiership contracted players, 166 – or 30 per cent – are not qualified to play for England, leaving 380 to select from.

Even worse, in a recent round of matches 51 per cent of starting line-ups were made up of non qualifiers. The England squad is selected from the 380 Premiership players, but there are about 175 to 200,000 regular players in our union who are ignored.

Will Eddie Jones or the RFU tell us if England players can only come from the Premiership?

Change is desperately needed. The RFU are all but silent, showing no leadership or imagination in the face of a barrage of national dissatisfaction, has ceded control of the professional game and its finances, (mainly donated by supporters from grassroots via Twickenham turnstiles) to the Premiership clubs and CVC.

The community game – players, supporters, club committees, coaches, volunteers, County Boards – all of whom the RFU absolutely depend on to administer all aspects of our game below the Premiership (especially after this second round of redundancies and financial cuts) deserve better.

Imagination: Promotion and relegation for all; a proper county and or representative championship and follow advice of local opinion whose volunteers do most of the work. We must learn from the Arsenals.