YOGI Berra, one of baseball’s stone-cold greats on and off the diamond, was a reluctant master of the unwitting witticism: “I didn’t say most of the things I said,” he once remonstrated. Yet he could also be the voice of reason, almost in spite of himself. An example: “You have to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”
The entrepreneurial spirits currently driving the elite end of English domestic rugby into its uncertain future would do well to pay attention. Having achieved their...