Is this a good thing for either the club concerned or the Guinness Premiership? Previous winners of National Division 1, though by no means all, have confirmed their promotion well before the end of the season. It is hard to argue against the proposition that the ability to start planning a Premiership campaign in February or March, rather than May, gives a club a huge boost in terms of finance and recruitment – and given the struggles of many promoted teams, it would seem that any boost is vital in the bid to stave off relegation next time around. It is a hard enough job to survive your first season in the Premiership - now, however, the promoted club is to have less than four months to prepare itself, while the existing Guinness Premiership clubs will have sewn up the bulk of their squads weeks or maybe months beforehand.

Given these circumstances, it is hard to see how the team promoted next year can possibly survive. There isn't a Harlequins or a Northampton, a big club temporarily relegated to the second flight, that you know has the punching power to make a return to the top table stick. With all due respect to Bristol, whose history compares favourably with many of the clubs in the Premiership, history is no longer a factor in top flight survival. It all comes down to money, to the bottom line.

When even the best prepared promotion candidates struggle in the Guinness Premiership, where on earth is the sense in introducing a system whereby the eighth placed team at the end of the regular Championship season could potentially win promotion? What good will straining that club's finances do, when their chances of survival are so low? How can the powers that be justify introducing a play-off system when there is no disfiguring of the league season by international demands in the way that there is in the Premiership? Looking from the outside in, the new structure of the Championship seems a mad-cap scheme of no benefit to either the Championship itself or to the future competitiveness of the Premiership – one can only conclude that the RFU must have had something to do with it.

Leeds know the pitfalls of the promotion/relegation merry-go-round better than most. Since 2000 they have been promoted three times, relegated twice, and would have been relegated in 2001/2 had not the squalid rejection of Rotherham's claims meant there was no movement between the leagues that year. As if to illustrate the points made above, the extra season that this afforded Leeds to consolidate their position meant that they remained in the Premiership for the next four years. However, the last four campaigns have seen them alternating promotion and relegation with dizzying – and depressing - predictability.

What is the point of all this? When the team promoted one year becomes the hot favourite for relegation the next, when the same few clubs are making the annual pilgrimage from one league to the other (and in the odd year when a Quins or a Northampton goes down, they bounce straight back up, rich enough to secure the comfort of mid-table safety the next time around), when it becomes almost impossible to make the transition from second flight to top flight in a single season, what is the point of all this except to make life hard for the administrators of these clubs? Fair play? Corinthian ideals?

I can see the attraction of ring-fencing the Premiership. When there are realistically only thirteen or fourteen clubs capable of competing at the top level, it seems crazy to inflict annual financial meltdown on one of that number. Clubs that start off weakly can grow and thrive, given time – as Leeds have shown. But one season is not enough. A quick look at the players who have come through the Leeds system makes you realise that, but for their relegations, they could have a seriously competitive squad by now. Rob Webber, Danny Care, Tom Palmer, David Doherty, Tom Biggs and Jordan Crane were all at Leeds before moving on, mostly as a result of demotion from the Premiership. It seems a waste that such a club has to assemble a new squad practically every time it starts a Premiership season. And although Wasps have been beneficiaries from the annual cherry picking that follows one club's demise, it hardly seems right. If fair play dictates that promotion and relegation are sacrosanct, what happens to such ideals when the surviving GP clubs are picking over the bones of their fallen colleague at season's end?

If all this makes it sound as though Leeds are certainties for the drop this time around, well, all I can say is that nothing is certain in sport. You can bet that Andy Key, Neil Back and the rest of the personnel up at Headingley will be doing everything in their power to defy the pull of history, and send another Harlequins or Northampton down in their place. Despite the meagre returns from their first six games this season (a single draw against Newcastle in the first round), Leeds have shown signs of competitiveness. Last week, indeed, they claimed a bonus point against league leaders Saracens at Vicarage Road (and but for a disallowed try, could have done even better). Old, experienced heads in the form of Andy Gomarsall, Seru Rabeni and Henry Paul are no doubt helping to bridge the gap between National League 1 and the Premiership, enabling the team to find its feet earlier than would otherwise be the case. And of course, they are guided by one of the most experienced, competitive, single-minded individuals ever to grace rugby: Neil Back. The only odd thing will be to see him prowling around in colours other than Leicester's.

For Wasps, this match is a potential booby-trap. After the clinical performance against Gloucester last week, the temptation to view Leeds as part of the wind-down into the Anglo-Welsh farce might be strong. In order to counteract this, the squad need only look back to the same fixture in 2002. Those of us who were there can remember a match in which Wasps seemed to be cruising to victory, having got to a 26-5 lead early in the second half. That, however, was when things started to go wrong. At the time, the focus of crowd rancour was one Robin Goodliffe, the Yorkshire referee who proceeded to award a string of penalties against Wasps, enabling Braam van Straaten to kick Leeds back into the game. In retrospect, perhaps more of our frustration should have been directed at a team who seemed to switch off as soon as they'd attained a twenty point lead. In any case, Leeds came back and by the end of the match Wasps were hanging on for grim death, dreading the next sharp peep from Goodliffe's Acme Thunderer. Another few minutes, as Warren Gatland remarked after the game, and Leeds would have won. In the event, the game ended in a draw, 26 all.

Win this weekend, and Wasps' visit to Saracens in three weeks' time could be a top of the table clash. But first we have to win this weekend. That draw in 2002 was Leeds' only positive result against Wasps in the Premiership, the latter having won the eleven other contests between the clubs. And while we wish Leeds well for the season, privately hoping that they can upset the odds and survive in the Premiership, building their squad on the sort of firm foundations that organisers seem increasingly determined to make it difficult to come by, we also hope that they don't start the job on Saturday. Sorry, Backy.

Allez Wasps!

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