Brian Moore in Telegraph

The demise of Worcester Warriors and Wasps has opened up the possibility of long overdue reform at the top of English rugby. The Rugby Football Union should seize this chance to extend reform to the grassroots game and secure rugby’s long-term future.

This is not a new theme for this column, but the issues are fundamental, and the sustainability of the sport is at stake. What is rugby union in England? What should it be? What role should it fulfil?

At its most basic level it can, and should, remain a game for all shapes and sizes and for all genders the academy systems of the Premiership clubs.

It is a criminal waste of money that could and should be spent in far better ways. Why not make promotion between Levels 3- 5 dependent on clubs also having fully developed junior and women’s sections?

RFU research has shown that some of the money put into Level 3-5 is only given for the glory of rising up a few leagues and bolstering the ego of, for example, a local business owner. That money would be lost under this revision, but it is money that distorts the leagues and forces clubs to spend to compete. The game would be better without it. If money is to come to the junior game, and it is needed, let it pay for better facilities, more teams, more coaches and boys, girls, and women’s sections.

I am at a complete loss to see why the RFU does not feel it can order the game thus. It is the governing body and can organise it in any way it likes at the non-professional level. Other bodies, like the RFL and ECB, have strictly demarcated the professional, semi-professional and amateur levels of their games. There is no reason why the RFU cannot do the same.

What bedevils this discussion is a handful, and it is just a handful, of clubs who do not find it difficult to raise their level’s annual threshold to pay players. They ask why their ambition should be curtailed. The answer is this – you can be ambitious. You can rise up the leagues, but you do it in the way prescribed, which does not disadvantage others and enhances rugby as a whole, not just your singular cause.

If you disagree with what is proposed, you have to explain why it is wrong and what alternative structure you advocate; one that looks at the game as a whole and its long-term viability. Just as there have been high profile casualties at the top of the game, there have been many more at every other level and they are as much to be mourned.

It is time for the RFU to be bold.