Rugby should not get left behind

At Twickenham there is a big hole where the South Stand used to be. They plan to reuse 95% of the rubble but the stadium currently resembles a big lock forward whose front teeth have been punched out. English rugby, on the eve of the Guinness Premiership season, feels much the same way.

It is more than two months since the Lions' adventure to New Zealand went pear-shaped but the doleful shadow lingers. Cricket is suddenly sexier, a football World Cup season has its own unstoppable momentum and, as usual, there is a destructive club v country undercurrent tugging at the ankles of the national coach Andy Robinson.

Nailing jelly to the office walls would have been less doomed than the Rugby Football Union's attempts to impose an 11-week rest period on the 20 English Lions who toured in the summer. After 10 years of professionalism the clubs and the RFU still circle each other like wary hyenas, probing for weaknesses and disagreeing over just about everything.

The upshot is that England's resident captain Martin Corry leads Leicester out tomorrow and Sale will be packed with England regulars in tonight's season-opener against Newcastle in Stockport, defying Robinson's three-line whip - and Jonny Wilkinson will be on the Falcons' bench. It will be fascinating to see who blames whom if England's fortunes fail to perk up this autumn when the All Blacks and Wallabies come calling.

But maybe this is the season when all of us should stop blaming coaches for everything from scrummaging woes to scrum pox and challenge the players to stand up and be counted. If there was one wider lesson to be learned from New Zealand - those who say there was nothing to be absorbed must have been on a different tour - it was that the average Kiwi back has a markedly superior and wider range of ball skills to the average Premiership player, and the same is true of many of the forwards. The All Blacks also seemed to have a better appreciation of space and where to find it. New Zealand have made a point of encouraging self-reliant, thinking players rather than meatheads.

This is not to say British players are less instinctive or naturally inferior, certainly not the Welsh, merely that more creative aspects of their profession have been grievously overlooked for loo long. Physicality is part of rugby's fabric but so is subtlety and the element of surprise. Too many Premiership games in the past couple of years have been thud-and-blunder exercises for which pressure on coaches cannot be entirely blamed.

So, instead of dusting down the emperor's new clothes again, this is a real season of opportunity for those smart enough to reach out and grasp it. Wasps have not won the last three Premiership titles by grinding opponents down or doing just enough; they have been dynamic when it really mattered, resourceful and unafraid to give talented youngsters a go.

Of all the up-and-coming players around the country there is none with a more burgeoning reputation than Wasps' back-row forward Tom Rees and there is no reason, under Ian McGeechan, why the champions should not continue to exploit the pace and strength of Paul Sackey and Ayoola Erinle. Up at Leicester, the former Wallaby centre Pat Howard would rather fly home tonight than be remembered as a coach whose teams were unadventurous or dull. Sale, at full tilt, are a thrilling sight.

And guess what? All three of the above sides finished in the top three last season and, from this distance, look likely to do so again. In France, after two weeks of their new Top 14 domestic competition, they are already talking about "un championnat à deux vitesses", with Toulouse, Biarritz and Stade Français looking ominously strong; the salary cap militates against a similar scenario in England but anyone planning to leap from the pack will not do so by playing 10-man rugby.

The stage is set, then, for sides possessing muscular authority and the odd magician. Saracens under Steve Diamond have tightened up considerably and Andy Farrell, unavailable for tomorrow's Twickenham double header because of injury, will bring big-match experience and inner steel. Saracens hope Farrell will be fit to face Leeds in Watford next week.

A personal hunch also suggests a maturing Leeds side are dark horses for a place in the final four of the revised end-of-season play-offs. Northampton, Bath, Gloucester and Worcester need to pack some of their home-ground confidence when they travel away, and London Irish and Newcastle cannot afford to underachieve indefinitely.

All of which leaves Bristol fighting desperately to avoid the usual fate of promoted clubs; they will not want to rely on winning their final fixture, away to Leicester, to retain their status. It will be hard work in a league which tends to favour men accustomed to dirty deeds, preferably done dirt-cheap. The time has come for everyone to show a little more imagination.