Clubs dismayed by RFU

Rugby Union

STEVE BALE

England's leading clubs yesterday responded with dismay to the less emollient tone suddenly struck by the Rugby Football Union in their continuing debate about how club professionalism - now only five weeks away - is to be organised and controlled.

No more meetings have yet been scheduled between the union and EPRUC, which represents the first two divisions, and the imminence of the end of the RFU's professional moratorium is leading to gathering gloom about the prospects for resolving the situation.

Yesterday EPRUC officials met but decided against making any statement in response to Sunday's pointed insistence by Cliff Brittle, chairman of the RFU executive, that "the soul of rugby is not for sale". Many of the major clubs regard Brittle, with his grass-roots constituency, as a prime obstacle to a settlement.

All bar one of the top 20 had boycotted an RFU meeting at Twickenham that was finally attended only by members of the Third and Fourth Divisions plus London Scottish. The boycotters were then taken aback when Tony Hallett, the RFU secretary, insisted that television companies would negotiate only with the union.

In fact the clubs have been in contact with broadcasters throughout the months of their protracted talks with the RFU and would anticipate being in a position to agree a TV deal there and then if the doomsday scenario came to pass and they fulfilled their ultimate threat of breaking away from the union.

The uncertainty is creating additional strains within clubs already apprehensive about how they will finance professionalism if they are blocked from taking the lion's share of TV revenue. "I have never known a situation where we are into April and still have no idea about our fixture list for next season," one First Division club officer said yesterday.

n Garin Jenkins, the Wales reserve hooker, said yesterday that he was considering an offer to join Bath, the English league leaders, from Swansea as an eventual successor to Graham Dawe.