In Touch with Mark Dobson

THERE were genuine grounds for optimism when English rugby revamped itself under a new banner this year.

England Rugby - a joint venture between the Rugby Football Union and Premier Rugby - was seen by the game's power brokers as a brave new world for the sport.

Try as it might though, English rugby union cannot lift itself into the 21st Century and if it's first efforts are to be believed, the game is rapidly moving backwards.

Double talk may be an institution in rugby but nobody has pushed the convention harder than the RFU. If we were all content with the fact that relegation and promotion issues surrounding the Premiership had been settled, we had all better think again.

New criteria concerning rugby grounds will be phased in sometime this season ruling that the National One champions of 2001-2002 must be able to meet the new rules in order to win promotion to the Premiership. The deadline for this criteria to be decided was originally September 1 - to be in place for the beginning of the season - but, surprisingly enough, England Rugby are already behind the eight ball. After all the disruptions of last season, Worcester and Rotherham will have to do battle with the backdrop of yet more confusion.

The criteria should not affect Worcester's bid you would think with their state-of-the-art stadium. But for Rotherham, there could be a few worried souls around the Clifton Lane Sports Ground. With only 300 seats for supporters at the club, there is no guarantee they would be given the green light by England Rugby if they do pip Worcester. The problem for everyone, though, is that all the clubs are still in the dark and have little idea when the new rules will be announced.

"We haven't been party to the agreements with the RFU and Premier Rugby," said Worcester's chief executive Geoff Cooke.

"However, we believe that criteria will be brought in for this season so that promotion is conditional for the club that wins National One. They must be able to meet this criteria. This criteria, though, still has not been sorted out.

"The draft document that I saw was full of holes. We objected to the draft because it stated that it would be published on September 1 or on such a date that the committee decides. We would have to comply with the new rules by March anyway - so we are all wondering when we are going to know what we have to do.

"At the moment we could be in the same situation as last year, not knowing what is happening until the death."

Embarrassingly for the RFU, when the draft guidelines came out, the new rules had included ground capacity figures that failed to add up and the necessity for two 'dug-outs' with space for five substitutes. A sceptic might suspect a PR man from the football world had been drafted in to apply this cosmetic make-over without any basic grasp of rugby regulations.

The double talk is really unveiled when you look at the stadiums already in the Premiership. Will these new rules state that you need to own your own ground? They wouldn't dare because many of the existing clubs would have to be thrown out. And if Rotherham do have a problem with the criteria then they can simply take out a lease with a football ground to solve the capacity problems. That can hardly be conducive to the growth of the game.

The make-up of this new revamp is already showing the cracks and, underneath, the old wrinkles of self doubt are beginning to bare themselves. Obsessed with the football model of success, the game's rulers are treading on dangerous ground.

"We stopped looking back," said RFU chief executive Francis Baron at England Rugby's launch. "We've stopped trying to right perceived wrongs, forget the past and started looking to the future. Working with a clean sheet of paper we looked at what we needed to make that future work."

Two weeks into the season of this new era, the paper-thin vision for the future has already been crumpled up and tossed into the bin.