The board of England Rugby Ltd might have held out until this week before they announced the clipping of Rotherham's wings. Would it really have made much difference? They'd come this far deferring the decision that both parties must have known for some time to be inevitable, so why not hang on for another week and thus provide something interesting to write about in previewing the tumult of the Zurich Premiership?
A dissertation could have been written on Bath's prospects at Birmingham/Solihull next season, or filling Tim Horan in on the unforgiving wasteland that is the County Ground in Exeter. Japie Mulder and Braam van Straaten at Otley? Ha! It could have been a book.
But, alas, it is not to be. They'd done so well to squeeze every last dribble of excitement out of a Premiership more or less wrapped up in time for Christmas, and it was all about relegation. In past seasons, we've seen the likes of Bedford, West Hartlepool and Rotherham themselves go the way of all flesh in the Premiership, but this season we really thought we might see someone big cop it.
It was a masterpiece of stage management by ERL (not to mention the Rotherham authorities) to have smothered for so long the news that the Yorkshire club hadn't a hope of satisfying the promotion criteria. Harlequins against Leeds last weekend was a sell-out, it was so exciting; 11,000 saw Gloucester send Bath a step nearer to oblivion.
And now this - they quietly let slip the news on the eve of Armageddon: no one's going down. Apparently, it was all a dream. They were expecting 10,000 at Leeds for the visit of Gloucester today - they won't get that now.
And the stage management hadn't stopped there. They'd shifted all the games to 3pm on the final day so that no one had an unfair advantage for the anticipated breathless climax - a breathless climax that now sees approximately nothing at stake.
Leicester are champions. There's no relegation, so the season is over for Harlequins, Saracens, Bath and Leeds, and the scramble for places in the Championship play-offs that gave last season's run-in a twist of excitement is also toothless, because the top eight are already safe. Sale and Gloucester join Leicester as those guaranteed a home tie, while Newcastle will hope to snatch the fourth home tie from London Irish. If Northampton beat Newcastle at Franklin's Garden and earn a bonus point, they could also snatch that fourth home tie, as long as Irish fail to pick up any points at Leicester.
Qualification for the Heineken Cup is typically complicated - a dazzling blur of Heineken champions, Championship champions, Premiership champions, runners-up, finalists, Shield winners, lucky dips and so on. Sifting through the minutiae, it looks safe to say that, unless the seventh- and eighth-placed teams in the Premiership make it through to the play-off final (unlikely), a top-six place in the Premiership will be enough for Europe. So, basically, if Wasps beat Bath at the Rec today and Northampton lose to Newcastle, Wasps will sneak in as last-gasp qualifiers for the Heineken Cup.
Oh, for a simultaneous broadcast....
