It is, rather, whether the trap door is opened at all, and the premier division is preserved with the present 12 clubs, or supplemented by Rotherham or, conceivably, by both Rotherham and Worcester.If the last solution is adopted, London Scottish and Richmond – cynically killed off by assorted Mr Moneybags led by Tom Walkinshaw of Gloucester – will have died in vain because the top division will have reverted to 14 clubs. If it is the former solution, with Rotherham once again denied access to the special area with free drinks enclosed by the decorative red ropes, it will look once again like a fiddle.The trouble is that, as I understand the position, the Rugby Football Union has given its word that this season, there will be promotion and relegation with one club going up and the other down At the time the promise was made, I applauded. I felt that Rotherham had been defrauded.What was surprising was not so much the pretext – the state of the club’s ground, for all the world as if they intended to stage internationals there – as the meek and compliant spirit in which the club took their rejection. But this has already been and may still be the subject of legal action with allegations that money winged its way in Rotherham’s direction; so, as the lawyers are always on the prowl, resting neither by night nor by day, I must be careful what I say.I am further inhibited because I am not so convinced as I used to be that promotion and relegation are a good thing.

Rob Andrew wrote a long report a few years ago in which he recommended that the first or premier division (whatever it was called) should be ring-fenced. This was not because he wished to protect Newcastle who were then riding high in the charts, but because he had arrived at the conclusion that protectionism, so to speak, was the best policy for rugby.Andrew wrote this in the brave days of Sir John Hall He has long departed the scene, as I predicted he would. The entrepreneurial knight became bored with what used to be called the handling code. But even without an ambitious fat-cat around the house, the prospect of relegation creates horrible difficulties for players, coaches, managers, directors of rugby, or whatever (I do wish the game would adopt a uniform system of nomenclature).The position of Jonny Wilkinson is a case in point. On Sunday he seems, through his kicking, to have saved Newcastle from the drop.

He says that if he had not, he would still have stayed with the club I am sure Wilkinson meant what he said at the time. However, I am not so sure that in this wicked world, this is what would have happened.For one thing, Leicester are badly in need of a good outside-half. And, for another, Clive Woodward, the England manager, has been consistent in selecting his senior squads from the premier division alone He would not have dropped Wilkinson. But I am reasonably certain that he would have told him that if he wished to secure his future, he would have to be playing in the premier division.