David Barnes, the chairman of the Professional Rugby Players' Association, has called on the Rugby Football Union to institute a radical shake-up of the professional game in England.
The RFU will today start debating how to replace Andy Robinson, who resigned last week, in the role of national head coach when the Club England committee receives a report by the RFU's elite rugby director, Rob Andrew. But Barnes said the decision-making process itself was the priority.
"We need a streamlined organisation to take charge of the professional game," said the Bath prop.
"We have to make drastic changes if England are to be successful again. The RFU is not fulfilling its objectives, as we saw last month, and while I welcome its chief executive, Francis Baron, saying he is open to radical change and ideas, it is time for action.
"We need two separate organisations in charge of the professional and amateur games with the RFU, Premier Rugby and the players running the former. The only way we will get a solution is if we all work together. The RFU is spending a lot of money on consultants to make recommendations about how the game should be run but the players would be a much better source of information for anyone looking to restructure English rugby. Neither we nor Premier Rugby have been consulted. There is only a certain amount of time that players will stand for what is going on and there will come a point where we say what we feel should happen."
Barnes was speaking at the publication of a survey into spectator satisfaction commissioned by Premier Rugby. More than 12,000 fans were questioned and the majority believed the Guinness Premiership was an exciting competition which they preferred to the international game on grounds of entertainment and cost.
Sale, Edinburgh, Toulouse and Calvisano have been fined €5,000 (£3,400) by European Rugby Cup Ltd for breaching regulations during the first two rounds of the Heineken Cup. Sale and Edinburgh did not meet advertising requirements; Toulouse and Calvisano did not take the field with teams they had announced. Sale and Toulouse will appeal.
