The richest man in rugby, Dr Tony O'Reilly (and we all thought it was Keith Wood), adorns his own magazine this month. The cover of Rugby News, which is published by Independent Magazines (UK) Ltd, shows O'Reilly, resplendent in blue shirt with white collar, above the headline The Billion Dollar Brain.

Inside O'Reilly urges the home Unions to "sell the future rights, sell the television rights, sell the merchandising rights, the access rights, the entertainment rights for 10 years".

Pointing to multi-millionaire Bernie Ecclestone, who with bonds transformed F1 in a similar way to that which O'Reilly proposes to do with rugby, the former international and Lions star says that this can be done, but would depend on a number of things, not least of all the need to "fertilise the game in foreign parts and look after the domestic game and not pay the players too much".

Players might well have a strong view on that. On second thoughts "too much" might not exactly mean the same thing in Castlemartin as it does in, say, Templeville Road.