By this stage of the English rugby calendar even strong men are starting to hallucinate. The first week of May has arrived yet the domestic season still has more than a month to run. Have you seen that television advert for Zurich involving the flying pigs? Bacon butties will be spied over Twickenham before certain people accept rugby union's need for more quality and less quantity.

For those still standing, however, a range of juicy truffles are still available. Other than the champions Leicester, who still have this season's final against Munster to worry about, no English club has yet guaranteed itself Heineken Cup rugby next season. The 11 remaining sides are either scrabbling around trying to avoid relegation - Leeds and Harlequins, who played last night, and Bath and Saracens - or desperately trying to join Europe's elite.

Some of the calculations are fiendish. For example, the Powergen Cup winners London Irish, currently third, could beat fourth-placed Sale tomorrow and still fail to be one of the six qualifiers for next season's most lucrative club tournament. Equally, a late surge by Bristol could edge them into Europe at Newcastle's expense, Wasps or, conceivably, Irish. As the Exiles' coach Gary Gold says: "We've looked at all the permutations and no way are we there yet."

As the table above indicates, there are eight candidates for the six slots, with only the top three Premiership sides guaranteed to qualify. A big win for Gloucester over Bath today should secure their place but, if they lose, Northampton could yet dart down the blind side and relegate them to fifth, their qualification hopes reliant on other results.

Such uncertainty is the consequence of allocating lofty qualifying positions to the two sides who reach the Zurich Championship play-offs final on June 8. An end-of-season showdown between Bristol and Wasps, say, would nudge aside teams who finished comfortably above them in the regular season. Alternatively, a final between Leicester and Sale, who could fill five of the top six ranking categories between them, would be fantastic news for the sides finishing fifth and sixth in the Premiership table.

Fair or not, it means no one can afford to relax, particularly in a fortnight's time should Gloucester end up third and Newcastle sixth. The clubs would then be required to meet in the play-offs quarter-finals at Kingsholm, the venue for their stormy December encounter which ended in allegations of racism - hotly denied and eventually dismissed - against Gloucester's French hooker Olivier Azam. As things stand, Newcastle's director of rugby Rob Andrew is still not welcome at Gloucester; who says the play-offs have no edge?

The play-offs' format re mains flawed - eight qualifiers from 12 eligible clubs means mediocrity is too often rewarded - but it will be mighty instructive to see who has the desire for the final sprint. The awards season is about to kick off, and one of the debating issues is how few England internationals would make an all-star team derived purely from club performances in this year's Premiership.

Apart from Jason Robinson, a short-odds favourite to be named Player of the Year by his fellow professionals and Zurich's own panel of judges, and the Leicester pair of Ben Kay and Lewis Moody, the only England squad members who might expect to make a composite side based on league form are Richard Hill and Charlie Hodgson. Either that means the likes of Dan Scarbrough, Mark Cueto and Ryan Strudwick are unappreciated world-class talents, or a few too many top players have been pacing themselves.

To be fair, a creatine-stuffed robot would be sore by now. Even some of the experienced overseas stars flown in have struggled to last the course, notably Tim Horan, Jannie de Beer and Abdel Benazzi at Saracens. The attrition rate is such that by the time England reach the World Cup in October next year some familiar names will surely be missing.

While it is to be hoped Dan Luger will have fully recovered from his knee ligament injury by then, and Neil Back has set his heart on defying Father Time, rugby is becoming a younger man's game by the week and careers are getting shorter. There are even fears Bath's Matt Perry, just 25, will struggle to recover properly from a serious disc problem. Even if he does, Clive Woodward seems to have decided there are younger, swifter alternatives for a role in England's back three. Rugby is a more saleable commodity than ever before - but at what cost?

How the six Heineken Cup places are decided

1 Heineken Cup winner (Leicester, if they beat Munster in the final)

2 Zurich Championship play-offs winner

3 Zurich Premiership winner (Leicester)

4 Zurich Premiership runner-up

5 Zurich Premiership third

6 Parker Pen Shield winner (Sale, if they beat Pontypridd in final)

7 Zurich Championship play-offs runner-up

8 Zurich Premiership fourth

9 Powergen Cup winner (London Irish)

10 Zurich Premiership fifth

11 Zurich Premiership sixth

Any club finishing in one (or more) of the top seven positions will definitely qualify for next season's Heineken Cup, because only Leicester can win this year's tournament. Clubs in positions below the dotted line must hope no more than five Premiership clubs finish above them.

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