Warren Gatland has been accused of, or thanked for, writing the England team-talk by observing that standards in the Guinness Premiership are the lowest he has seen since he arrived on our shores. I suppose by now the former coach of a very successful Wasps team should know that anything he says as the current coach of Wales is going to be spun into a hate attack on the English.
Perhaps he simply doesn't care. Why should he? The reaction to his remarks shows that the level of debate on the game is the lowest it has ever been since he arrived here. It is not a fact that the Guinness Premiership has provided pretty grim fare this season, but you would have to be a one-eyed flag-of-Saint-George-bearing moron to have it mind that it has been enthrallingly good.
It may not be the fault of the players or coaches. It's hardly their fault that the contact area has become a danger zone for ball-carriers without back-up verging on what is required to launch an invasion.
But it doesn't alter the impression that domestic club rugby in England has been cautious and dull. London Irish used to buck the trend, but their game last week against Leicester showed that even the Exiles are losing the will to live a little. And to think that this is some sort of contribution to the pamphlet that will pump up the England forwards when the time comes to face Wales is childish.
French connections
There is much more fun in France at the moment. Laurent Seigne, after Ewen McKenzie at Stade Français, has become the second Top 14 coach to be shown the door. The large English contingent in the Corrèze was apparently involved in the coup to oust Brive's old bruiser, one of the last great changing-room head-bangers.
Seigne, coach of the marvellous team that won the Heineken Cup in 1997, should have realised that it is the coach's role now to say nothing, have no views, express no opinion ...
McKenzie, meanwhile, has refused to go quietly. Post-sacking comment is permitted, especially when it accuses the sparklingly glitzy club president, Max Guazzini, of shipping in players to Paris solely on the basis of how they would look, stripped bare, on the pages of Les Dieux du Stade, the club's racy calendar. Personally, I think it's as good a recruiting tool, so to speak, as any.
The spat may have thrown Stade off-guard, since they lost at home to Perpignan in the last round of the Top 14. An away day now at Clermont, themselves beaten in the last round by Montpellier, should remind everyone that it is time to don their kit and stop posing.
This is an extract from The Breakdown, Eddie Butler's weekly email on the world of rugby union. To subscribe click here
