Welsh players and administrators seem to feel the deprivation caused by the loss of annual matches against English clubs

The League system has undoubtedly done a lot for English rugby. Whether it has done anything for the game in Wales is more questionable. The Courage League has matched clubs that were not on visiting terms, such as Harlequins and Wasps - and, incidentally, exposed the claims of some northern and Cornish clubs that they were the subject of unfair discrimination by the selectors. The Heineken League, by contrast, has served mainly to demonstrate how thinly the available talent in Wales is spread.

There is something else. By this time in the season, in pre-League days, Cardiff, Llanelli and Swansea would have visited Twickenham or Old Deer Park to play Harlequins or London Welsh (for Twickenham rather than the Stoop, was then the Quins' principal pre-Christmas ground). In addition, the last two Welsh clubs, together with Neath, had fixtures with Richmond until Llanelli's annual visit was called off after the Raking-of-Ralston episode of 1978 (where, oddly enough, the guilty party was an Englishman playing for the Welsh club).

Welsh players and administrators seem to feel the deprivation more keenly than do their English opposite numbers. There is now a recommendation from the Rugby Football Union that, out of a First Division of 10, the top four clubs should participate in a European tournament and the bottom six in an Anglo-Welsh competition.

In my opinion, this is a pointless proposal. Who is going to take such a contest seriously if it excludes Bath, Harlequins, Leicester and Wasps and, on the Welsh side, Cardiff, Llanelli, Pontypridd and Swansea?

This, of course, is to assume that the Welsh fall in with the RFU. It seems they have not been consulted. The RFU appear to have come up with a succession of ideas out of the hat, for all the world as if they were a kind of rugby think-tank - or, come to that, a collection of columnists - rather than a responsible organisation with obligations towards players, supporters and equivalent bodies throughout the world.

My object here, however, is not to analyse the whole of the report which was published just under a week ago. That can wait. It is, rather, to point to the effects of the exclusion of Wales from England and England from Wales.

It is always as well for columnists to come clean. One effect is that I am not as well-informed about Welsh rugby as I was a decade ago.

By this stage of the year I should have observed, playing for the principal clubs, about three-quarters of the contenders for places in the national side. Instead, over the last three years, I have, as far as Welsh rugby is concerned, seen most of the internationals at Twickenham and watched Cardiff, together with Swansea's matches against Australia and South Africa. The rest of my recent knowledge I have derived from Rugby Special.

Now this programme, whatever its deficiencies - the principal of which is that, since it was farmed out to independent producers, it has been overtaken by a compulsive, giggly sillyness - has nevertheless been more than fair in the share it allots to Welsh rugby. Indeed, the more dyed- in-the-wool English supporters might justifiably complain, in much the same spirit as I switch off (sometimes metaphorically, more often literally) when Hawick are playing Gala.

Instead of complaining, however, English supporters say to me: "As your club rugby is so good, as we see on Rugby Special week after week, how is it that the national side are so bad?" The answer, so I am told by friends who watch Welsh rugby week after week, is that the clubs are just as bad as the national side. Television, through skilful cutting, makes them look better than they are.

The Welsh side on Saturday did not look better than they were because I watched them uncut. For myself, I echo George Formby's song: "Things Might Have Been A Great Deal Worse."

My view is that it is folly for Kevin Bowring (who looks like being appointed coach on a long-term basis) to look ahead four years to the World Cup. Jack Rowell can do so because he has past success to bolster him and the side. Bowring's first task is to restore self-confidence. This means playing the best players, not only Ieuan Evans, but Robert Jones and Jonathan Davies. I should put Davies in the centre, retain Justin Thomas at full- back and give Arwel Thomas, now of Bristol, formerly of Neath, a go at outside-half.