Staggered kick-offs are here to stay as money triumphs over fairness

England will be at an advantage on Saturday –and in the World Cup – as late starts mean they will know size of their task

Rosy future: England players applaud the fans in Rome after their win which capped a strong Six Nations

Stuart Lancaster has been on both sides of the Six Nations scheduling line in the space of a calendar year – a line drawn primarily by the broadcasters, who consider it their inalienable right to call the tune when they are the ones paying the piper – and he knows where he likes it best. “We’re undoubtedly in a better place now than we were 12 months ago,” the England coach said yesterday. “Playing last in this situation may not give you an advantage, exactly, but it certainly gives you knowledge.”

This distinction was not so much fine as non-existent. When England play France at Twickenham early on Saturday evening, their principal rivals for the title, Ireland and Wales, will already have performed. Therefore, the coach’s “knowledge” could hardly be more advantageous, given that he and his side will have a crystal-clear idea of what they must do to secure the Six Nations trophy, down to the very last point.

Not that the coach should feel apologetic. Last year, the boot was on the other foot, with England playing – and winning, by a country mile – the penultimate game of the tournament in Rome, only to see the Irish seize the spoils by doing the bare minimum in Paris a couple of hours or so later.

Is this a satisfactory state of affairs? Is it even remotely fair? As Lancaster himself pointed out, France themselves are heavily disadvantaged because they played Italy last Sunday rather than last Saturday and will effectively be unable to prepare for the trip to Twickenham until tomorrow at the earliest. “We faced the same situation when we went to Wales for our Grand Slam match two years ago,” the coach added. England lost by a record margin that night.

Those who rail against the iniquities of staggered kick-offs or Sabbath rugby are piddling in the face of a hurricane. As one member of the BBC team working on this Six Nations tournament said just the other day: “There is not a broadcaster on the face of the Earth who would buy the rights to a competition like the Six Nations and not want to screen every game in prime time, or the nearest thing to it. Simultaneous matches? They disappeared with the dinosaurs.”

Not quite, actually. When the final round of English Premiership games is played on 16 May, all six fixtures will begin together. In the interests of fairness – not always the most pressing concern when it comes to decision-making – football does something similar in the pool stages of major international tournaments, as well as in the club game.

But the trend, in rugby union at least, is for money to talk the loudest, and as the broadcasters are the ones responsible for supplying the lion’s share of the folding stuff, their decibel count is off the scale. At the home World Cup this autumn, no two games will start at the same time – not even in the decisive round of pool matches, when quarter-final places are at stake.

This will also play into England’s hands. Their final group match, against the amateurs of Uruguay at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester, will be a red-rose landslide. Just how big a landslide they require could conceivably depend on the outcome of the Australia-Wales contest at Twickenham, which, handily enough, will kick off three and a quarter hours earlier.

Like it or not, the pound signs are changing the way in which union aficionados connect with the game they love. Yesterday, the top-flight English clubs announced a lucrative extension to their current broadcasting contract with BT Sport worth, it is strongly rumoured, around £220m a year over four seasons, beginning in 2017-18 – a very significant leap on the current £152m deal, especially as the new arrangement does not include rights to European rugby.

This is all fine and dandy, but to what extent does the hike in money go hand in hand with moves to expand the Premiership into a 14-team competition and end promotion and relegation? And to what degree do the paying public fancy the idea of a ring-fenced tournament at the top end of the domestic game, with enough “dead” matches to fill a graveyard? We will never know, because the money men will never ask them.