Rugby Union: Another fine for England stirs pot

HOORAY, MORE politics. Just when you thought the Five Nations' Championship was finally about to take its rightful place at the top of the rugby agenda, the men in suits decided to stage another publicity hijack. With its usual impeccable timing, the International Board yesterday slapped a pounds 30,000 fine on the Rugby Football Union, threatened to increase the damage by another pounds 50,000, and then expressed the bizarre hope that "the distrust between the RFU and their fellow IB members was now at an end". Fat chance.

The financial penalties agreed by a four-man IB disciplinary committee resulted from a meeting - or a "kangaroo court", depending on who you speak to - held in Dublin a week before Christmas. Two charges were laid against the RFU: firstly, that it had failed to take sufficiently stringent action against the Allied Dunbar Premiership clubs over their rebel matches with Cardiff and Swansea and, secondly, that it had not backed the IB in its European Commission scrap with those same clubs, who are seeking to establish commercial rights under EC competition law.

A guilty verdict on the first count cost the RFU pounds 60,000 in IB grant money.

This second conviction is far more inflammatory, however; the IB is demanding pounds 30,000 immediately - or, at least, within seven days of the completion and failure of any appeal - from an organisation that is already staring down the barrel of a pounds 2.5m deficit for the current business year.

There was no response from Twickenham last night, but it was just possible to hear a faint groaning sound from an increasingly impoverished boardroom.

"As a senior foundation member, the RFU has a vital role to play in the stabilisation, governance and development of the game and it must work within the democratic structure of the IB to achieve these aims," said Stephen Baines, the board's chief executive. "We have the right to expect honourable and open conduct from our members and we require them to support decisions reached collectively." The disciplinary committee delegates, who decreed that the RFU had "deliberately misled and misinformed" the board over its response to the clubs' EC application, also decided that Twickenham should meet the costs of the hearing - a total certain to exceed pounds 10,000.

At least England's players, as opposed to England's administrators, were given a momentary turn on centre stage yesterday as Clive Woodward announced a 30-strong training squad in preparation for the Calcutta Cup match in London on Saturday fortnight. It was a long-range sort of selection, given that the coach was in Australia on a recce mission in advance of this summer's World Cup camp, but the familiarity of the party meant there would be no music for him to face at home.

With two influential midfield figures, Will Greenwood and Phil de Glanville, and his most powerful young prop, Phil Vickery, injured and unavailable, Woodward has taken the opportunity to restore Barrie-Jon Mather, the former rugby league centre from Sale, and Will Green, the Wasps tight head, to the wider squad, which meets up for a two-day get-together next Monday. As expected, he will also cast a tutored eye over Steve Hanley, the outsized Sale wing who has been scoring Premiership tries for a pastime of late.

The only other new face belongs to Neil McCarthy, the Gloucester hooker, who is fast closing in on his former Kingsholm club-mate, Phil Greening, as the main challenger to Richard Cockerill. Out of sorts as well as out of the West Country, Greening's poor form for Sale is giving serious cause for concern.

In many ways, the more interesting of yesterday's Twickenham selections was a 40-man "A" squad, which also gathers for a 48-hour session next week. Two of the London Irish front row, Neal Hatley and Richard Kirke, are included, along with their midfield club-mate, Nick Burrows - a timely acknowledgement of the Exiles' exhilarating run of form in both league and cup.

Remarkably, 10 of last summer's tourists in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa are now so far out of the representative running that they are not considered to be among the 73 leading performers in the country. They include Tim Stimpson, once a great white hope of English rugby, and Jos Baxendell, who faced both the All Blacks and the Springboks last summer but currently finds it difficult to get a game for Sale. Dominic Chapman, Josh Lewsey, Peter Richards and Lewis Moody are also out on their ears, as is Richard Pool-Jones, the Stade Francais flanker. As he said only last month: "When you're playing in France it's out of sight, out of mind."