Rugby's governing class might explain it this way: “We’re making the game leaner and meaner by cutting off the excess fat.” Or alternatively: “There’s too much baggage and we need to trim it down.” What they never say is that at professional club level, the sport is flirting with anorexia – not a word you often hear when Uini Atonio and Will Skelton are on the field.
In France and Japan, the only major Test-playing nations with a functioning system of promotion and relegation, the recent action has had an edge-of-the-seat quality that cannot be replicated by the Premiership, the United Rugby...