Sorry Brendan but I don’t share the same optimism

SO Brendan Gallagher “smells stifling fear” in the reduced Premiership salary cap, but I disagree with his belief that the removal of all pay restrictions would produce “big bucks, high profile, celebrity players” to “cut across the entire sporting community”.

The profile of rugby’s top players is limited by the profile of the game and, if players like Charles Piutau, Joe Marler, Faf de Klerk, Marcus Smith and Jonny Wilkinson have been unable to transcend this, I don’t know who will.

The fact that the clubs have been unable to cover the costs even of their capped wages bills for some time doesn’t dampen Brendan’s wide-eyed optimism, with two leagues of 10 elite teams to replace the current 13 level one clubs and the few, ambitious level two ones as full time professional sides.

So the aggregate number of professional players would rise, while the number of revenue earning matches for each club would fall. Brendan’s belief is that automatic promotions and relegations between the two leagues would be enough to draw in sponsors and investors.

Rugby, even as a minority sport, can, as he writes, produce “huge, capacity crowds at Six Nations and gala European games”, but it cannot sustain anything like that level of support for regular club games – which is why Premiership clubs need such large subventions from the RFU.

Let’s see some of the new “cash rich billionaires”, on which he places so much hope, come on board before any relaxation of the prudent salary cap restraints is considered.

There can surely be no question of even more funds going to elite clubs from Twickenham, with Community rugby crying out for a restoration of at least some of its previous funding.