England turn on to TV deal

Internationally, they will be asking for considerably more in return for considerably less since striking the iconoclastic Murdoch deal for £87.5m five years ago.

This time, there is no English Six Nations element on separate offer, the jewel in the crown which tempted Sky to pay over the odds for club rugby, then in an embryonic form of professionalism. In presenting the three annual autumn Tests against Southern Hemisphere opposition, the RFU can offer a streamlined England team with unlimited box-office appeal.

Last week an estimated seven million viewers saw them on Grandstand, only because they were playing in a live BBC zone on Welsh Rugby Union premises at Cardiff.

England's satellite audiences at Twickenham being only a fraction of that figure, the puzzle for the RFU is to find a balance between satellite money and terrestrial audiences.

Its negotiations could be seriously undermined if the RFU Reform Group succeeds in persuading the game's vast army of amateur clubs to sabotage the proposed peace deal between the Union and its top professional clubs at yet another special general meeting, almost certain to be called for sometime in April.

The seventh of the seven resolutions, supported by more than 150 junior clubs, states 'that on the expiry of the existing BSkyB agreement for television coverage of English international matches, no contract or agreement shall be entered into by the RFU without provision for the live screening of all such matches on terrestrial television.'

In serving such notice to the RFU, the clubs behind the call to eliminate satellite deals say their reason is 'to ensure that all English home internationals are screened live on terrestrial television, thereby encouraging and promoting the widest possible audience.'

The controversial decision to strip the Zurich Premiership winners of their champion status and confer that instead on the winner of the top- eight play-off final in May has been driven by a desire to make the club game more appealing to a broadcaster. It guarantees an annual end-of- season climax with the promise of another sell-out Twickenham occasion.

Sale chief executive Peter Deakin, the Pied Piper behind Saracens' ground- breaking community relations at Wat-ford, is bullish about the success of the new format.

He said: 'There is nothing like the play-off concept to create knock-out matches of terrific intensity. They've only had three play- offs in Rugby League and they are already playing the grand final in front of huge crowds.

'We will start with a top eight but my ideal, for a 12- club league, would be a five- club play-off with the league winners sitting out the first round of matches.'