Everyone has their own rugby epiphany and those of you in your early forties can probably guess the precise moment mine occurred. On January 27 1973 we were sitting rather distractedly in a draughty village hall where my brother's sixth birthday party was taking place. While Mum was preoccupied dishing out the jelly, Dad caught my eye and nodded at the exit. Out we crept and sprinted home just in time to catch the kick-off between the All Blacks and the Barbarians. "THIS IS GARETH EDWARDS... WHAT A SCORE!" Mum still complains about it but I can't remember watching anything which has had a longer-lasting effect on my life.

These days it is more fashionable to knock the Baa-Baas. Only this week we have been reminded they are an anachronism. Premier Rugby's chief executive Mark McCafferty suggested that games such as the forthcoming Barbarians v South Africa fixture at Twickenham "don't fit into pro rugby any more". That same weekend, pointed out McCafferty, is an EDF Energy Cup weekend and Premiership players of all nationalities will not be allowed to face the Springboks. There was much talk about contracts and how "disappointing" it would be if individual players accepted the invitation to wear the black-and-white hoops. So it's official. Schalk Burger v Jerry Collins and Bryan Habana v Sitiveni Sivivatu is much less entertaining than a dead Anglo-Welsh rubber between Bristol and Leeds Carnegie.

I'm fully aware it's not quite that simple. Barbarians fixtures do not crackle in the imagination in quite the same way they did in 1973. World Cups and professionalism have muscled their way into the equation and the fixture calendar is more tightly packed than a vanload of illegal immigrants. The Heineken Cup starts on Friday, the World Cup is only just in the rear-view mirror. Who needs an afternoon of meaningless candyfloss? Who compensates the club owner when his star player does his knee ligaments playing in a glorified friendly? And so on and so on.

But let's just stop and reflect for a second on what exactly McCafferty and friends are consigning to the wastebin of history. According to the promoter of the Twickenham game a crowd of 60,000 is expected. It might have been even more but there is apparently engineering work on the railways that weekend and the stadium capacity has had to be reduced. That is a hell of a lot of people to disillusion on a point of principle.

Nobody is suggesting the players are turning out for nothing but, equally, they hugely enjoy mixing with their peers. Sometimes it is the only social contact they have with long-time opponents. Thomas Castaignède had a clause in his club contract which specifically allowed for him to be released for Barbarians duty and, apparently, he is not alone. It is claimed that at least three or four current English-based club players are ready to defy the Premier Rugby ban.

Actually, the more you think about it the more killjoy the whole edict seems. Would Brian Ashton - or whoever else is going to coach England in the Six Nations - not learn something useful about James Haskell, Danny Cipriani or Shane Geraghty in a fixture of this nature? Would Brian O'Driscoll and Paul O'Connell not want to rinse away the disappointments of France? And at the precise moment when European rugby is looking to capitalise on what McCafferty describes as "the halo effect" generated by a successful World Cup, why not lend support to an exercise which, given a fair wind, could encourage the next generation of kids, and their families, to go in search of similar kicks down at their local Premiership club?

Add to that the missionary role the Barbarians are increasingly adopting by sending teams to Russia and Georgia to spread the gospel into areas where McCafferty's 'halo' is less easily discernible. The grand Easter tours to south Wales may no longer be feasible but imagine what a high-profile Barbarians visit to Beijing or Los Angeles might achieve in terms of sowing rugby's seed, so to speak.

McCafferty reckons rugby needs to tap into bigger global economies: who better to blaze the trail than the team with the crazy name and the no-fear attitude? Anyone who loves rugby partly for its innate quirkiness and sense of fun - was I alone all those years in hoping Conan Sharman of London Scottish would get a Barbarians call-up? - can only pray this particular black-and-white minstrel show continues for a while yet.

What Roy Gravell had in common with my father

Talking of fun, the world feels a much greyer place since the death of Ray Gravell at the age of 56. The obituaries have been wonderfully warm and rightly so. 'Grav' happened to be the first rugby player I ever approached in search of a quote. Llanelli had just lost heavily at Harlequins and it was with some trepidation that I accosted the bearded West Walian strongman. I need not have worried. "We're like a bottle of red wine," he informed me, eyes twinkling. "Sometimes we don't travel well." As it happens I learned of his passing on the exact 15th anniversary of my own father's similarly premature death. It's too late now but I'm eternally grateful to both of them for teaching me the most important lesson of all: sport is not simply a matter of winning and losing.

Lisbon let-down

I'd hoped a mini-break in Lisbon might offer a few signs that rugby has caught the public imagination since Portugal's encouraging World Cup debut. In four days, sadly, we did not glimpse a single oval-shaped ball, let alone a set of posts or kids in Cristiano Ronaldo shirts practising their side-steps. The IRB say they will not be announcing before next April what level of funding Portuguese rugby can expect in future. It would be a desperate shame if the feelgood momentum of France '07 ends up counting for absolutely nothing.