Club game should return to amateur status below elite level and back to days of doing it for love not money

Here is a thought – why not make the game amateur? Not all of it, of course, just all those leagues below a certain level where club after club work themselves into a frenzy each and every season trying to make ends meet, to find the extra 50 quid a week they need for some lumpy old prop, maybe from South Africa or, the recent must-have accessory, a Georgian version, who will shore up the scrum, get them a few more points, enhance their league status, which means that the going-rate for players will have gone up to £75, £175, £1,750 by next season.

It is a circle of doom, a cycle of diminis…