Ring-fenced cup with weakened teams is turn off

LAST weekend’s match report on Gloucester v Bath in the Premiership Cup is headed ‘Bath’s second string destroyed in record defeat to Gloucester’. Score: 71-10.

And the RFU lets Premiership Rugby get away with ring-fencing this competition as well as their own league!

Championship fulltimers and players in lower leagues are barred from playing against Premiership fringe players in a competition which Premiership clubs such as Bath have totally devalued.

England’s leading clubs were responsible for also devaluing any meaningful domestic rep stage, so that England teams now come from a tiny clique which includes discredited Saracens and Harlequins, and which has now persuaded the RFU Council to sanction ring fencing. What will be their next target?

Jamie Blamire, who has been used as a replacement by Newcastle this season, started against the Boks yesterday. Would South Africa, Ireland, New Zealand or any other nation start an international match with a player who is not even a first choice at his club?!

That shows the mess in which absolute reliance on 13 self-interested Premiership clubs to supply the national side has got English rugby into. A structure in which such a thing can happen is fundamentally flawed.

Jeff Gage

MAYBE because there were Test matches going on, or because most clubs were putting out weakened teams, but last weekend was noticeable for the lack of fans. The best attendance was at Leicester, where the total was almost equal to the combined attendance at Exeter, Saracens and Newcastle.

Peter Leonard