Since there was no European Lord Mayor’s show to leave us dazzled and unable to raise a cheer for what comes next, there should be no reason not to do so. Let’s hear it then for European Professional Club Rugby’s two competitions: the Champions Cup and the Challenge Cup, that begin this week in stadiums near you.

Ah. As they say in those deafening pre-match contrivances to whip up a fever among supporters who may be quite happy to be left to wish their neighbour a good afternoon rather than holler their partisanship: “Shall we try that again? Come on, people. Give it up for …”

For what? It is the suspicion among more than a few of those faithful fans that the Champions Cup and the Challenge Cup are not so much cross-border opportunities to enrich the rugby culture of the continent as cross-Channel carve-ups by the clubs of France and England, an Anglo-French cartel bearing all the guarantees of fair play that go with running a sport from Switzerland – in EPCR’s case out of lakeside Neuchâtel in the Jura mountains.

Now, rugby union, historically the chosen sport of regimes that have not been best known for their lightness of touch – apartheid South Africa, Romania under Ceausescu, Argentina of the Junta and Vichy France spring to mind – has never been averse to a strong hand on the tiller. The game is by nature hazardous and needs to be handled forcefully, and nobody comes with bigger clout than the club owners of the Premiership and the Top 14.

It is possibly not the most appropriate moment then to suggest that the ways of England and France at club level may be good for what the owners want – players made to last a nine-month season – but, in the light of what has been revealed in the past seven weeks, are entirely ill-suited to touching a higher bar. As if the clubs care about international performances, except as a means to exploit failure. The timid exits by England and France from the World Cup created a confusion that will benefit only the strong of purpose, the nine-month men for whom the World Cup and the Six Nations and Lions tours are blots on their calendars.

Nobody is feeling the inconvenience of recent absences more than Mourad Boudjellal, owner of Toulon. The champions of the past two European Cups lost four of their first seven games in the Top 14. Wretched World Cup, getting in the way. Boudjellal has threatened to walk away if his club does not make the play-offs. It is not expected, now that his stars are back, that he will be gone in May 2016.

Toulon are at home on 15 November against Bath in Pool 5 of the Champions Cup. If ever the folly of trying to engage sympathetically with the national cause has been exposed it is at Bath, the centre (the c-word) of transformation until this week of Sam Burgess. From almost his first day of educating the league convert in the ways of union, Mike Ford – who knows a thing or two about crossing the codes – said that his new recruit was better suited to the back row. England, of course, begged to differ. And now Burgess is back at the Rabbitohs in South Sydney, back in the arms of his brothers and Russell Crowe, back in the bosom of league.

If ever a club had good reason to feel that their daring project had been wrecked by the meddling of a purportedly greater authority, it would be Bath. These are not sunny times over England and the shadows grew only darker this week. Toulon away, especially with Boudjellal dark of humour, does not often shine a light on benighted travellers.

Goodness, what bleakness. Is there nobody to lighten the spirits? Well, at the risk of incurring sneers for the nth time by promoting the worth of Scotland, it is time for Glasgow to strike. If ever disappointment came as a positive force it was in the manner of Scotland’s exit against Australia. The Scottish players must be furious and itching to show the world how badly they were wronged.

Well, here’s their chance. The relationship between Vern Cotter’s Scotland and Gregor Townsend’s Glasgow is as harmonious as England’s relationship with their clubs is uneasy. Glasgow are the reigning champions of the undervalued Guinness Pro 12 – more World Cup players came from here, for example, than from any other league in the world – and seem ready to combine all the recent frustrations with the resentment at being viewed with disdain by the Anglo-French alliance that reshaped the old Heineken Cup, plus the all-important reality of being a very accomplished, well-drilled team. They are away first in Paris against high-flying Racing 92, but round one is a good place to spring a surprise.

Elsewhere, it will be interesting in Pool 1 to see how Saracens, Toulouse and Ulster get on in the home of the newcomers, Oyonnax, fiendishly difficult to beat at their Stade Charles-Mathon in the Ange Valley in the Jura mountains. They are, that is, the closest club to Neuchâtel, the administrative hub of the new tournaments, the Swiss rugby home hoping to give Europe something to stir it from its glumness.