Champ clubs reject Prem 2 franchise model

Couldn't agree more. The unspoken part of all this is that from the Premiership's point of view, this is all about what to do with those young, spare players.

It's as if the Prem 10 have been ordered to reduce their playing staffs by some outside body in order to achieve financial viability, so they have gone away and thought about how they can do that without losing the large playing pool they need to maintain quality during the rest periods their first 30-45 players need.

It's as if they thought, well, if we can get a league below us that is matched to our clubs, like Triple-A baseball, a farm league, then we can offload those youngsters who aren't really good enough to play at Championship level but they will stay part of the game.

It's as if they thought, well, the only thing that matters is the survival of our clubs, so if in the process clubs like London Scottish are hollowed out so they play 30+ loan players in a season, so their supporters don't know who is in the team from one week to the next, so the "actual" Scottish players don't know when they will next play in their favoured position, then no big deal because only Prem clubs matter.

It's as if the Prem 10 thought, well, we can't have clubs going down out of this second tier or the quality of gametime for our farmed players will go down and we certainly can't have the zombies  coming up into our league because how could you possibly have a farm club play the farmers without a conflict of interest? So of course it's a franchise, invite-only, tender-process, ring-fence, monopoly protection. Hoorah.

It's as if they thought, maybe the existing Tier 2 clubs won't want to sell their souls, but, hey, what about those three Prem clubs that went bust? They'll be grateful for a franchise lifeline, so we can keep the Tier 2 clubs who refuse to play Farmball out of P2 and replace them with "Phoenixes" (never mind the example of moral hazard that sets to the next Old Elthamians or the next Henley) a few wannabes from Nat 1 with no money and crowds of 500 and maybe a university team or some academies.

It's as if they thought all that and then said to the RFU: "This will fix the game." And the RFU said: "My God you're right - have £268m for the first four years and whatever we can afford for the next four."

And then it's as if some other people who actually give a damn about sport, about fairness, about something other than money, decided: "Sod that. Enough is enough."

(Incidentally, I don't think Ampthill want to go this way, but I'm not sure they can see an alternative. Nobody knows what London Scottish think, but they way they are behaving, I'm not sure it makes a lot of difference.)