By OSB
May 9 2003

I'm struggling to stay calm enough to put down anything by the way of a worthwhile contribution to this debate.I was incensed at this stage last year when promotion and relegation was the topic of conversation all around the rugby supporting world in this country. Fuelled by the speculation and debate in the local and national press - the best free advertising there is - how many extra tickets were sold in ultimately meaningless matches as a result? How many £££s did we, the loyal supporters, stump up believing that we were to witness something special, a defining moment in a club's history?

It doesn't matter how much because, as we all now know, we were sold a pup.

This season we have been promised that there will be promotion and relegation - not once but several times. My word, the last couple of months have been exciting. Seemingly doomed, the Newcastle Falcons have put together an amazing sequence of results. Every week the bottom place seems to be occupied by a different team. The five or so teams locked in the relegation battle all seem to have played one another in this time, adding spice to the whole saga.

So, how many extra tickets has that sold? It amounts to a small fortune. Be honest, who would have been at Vicarage Road on a wet Tuesday to watch Saracens play Bristol had Premiership survival been the main/sole point of the fixture?

What is Bristol's average home gate? Compare it with the crowd for last weekend's extravaganza of below par rugby at Ashton Gate.

With no promotion or relegation there is a group of people who are pulling the wool over the eyes of the supporters on rather a grand scale and they are taking money from thousands of us. And they deign to have the cheek not to announce that there will be no promotion and relegation until after all the tickets for Saturday's matches have been sold.

In the days of highway robbery these people may have been called charlatans and thieves.

If you think that this is a bit extreme, wait on. This same group is about to come up with some other formula that will mean that a coterie of clubs will put themselves into a cosy little ring-fenced environment. However they choose to package it, there will only be one winner and (up to) five runners-up. They are going to have the devil of a job to sell tickets for the dead rubbers. It's OK if your team is in with a shout of the title or a place in Europe but what of the others. What of this year's relegation candidates - who's going to go and watch their meaningless games? Let's face it, for some of those teams, finishing eighth has been more of a dream than a possibility since November.

So think carefully, chaps. You may think that it's your game and you can do with it what you like but you take away competition at your peril. You'll have your cavernous football stadiums and your smart facilities. You'll have your way round the salary cap and a season full of hope stretching out in front of you. But what happens when you drop out of contention because your try machine got crocked playing in a friendly match for England in November? What happens when the reason for playing the game has been diluted so much that even your most loyal fans decide that the brownie points on offer for going shopping are worth more than buying one of your tickets and spending money in your club shop or in your bars?

You know that fortune you have just squandered on trying to buy success at rugby? You are on your way to squandering another one by having your players trot out in a series of meaningless fixtures.