It’s all a difficult question of trust

Leicester's latest fine for salary cap irregularities – their second in as many years – throws up an interesting question or two about the structure of the top-flight club game in England and the unintended consequences of relegation-less rugby.

To be clear, the transgressions for which the Midlanders have been punished were not of a Saracens magnitude. As a consequence, there have been few, if any calls, for a points deduction, let alone demotion to the second tier.

But what happens if and when we find an elite club's fingerprints all over a really serious contravention of the salary regulations – or, come to that, any other kind of financial sharp practice? Yes, the Premiership authorities could order them to spend a season playing Caldy and Ampthill and Hartpury College, but with no promotion system in place, how would they bring them back up again?

Across the water, several top-end French clubs have found themselves in deep in the regulatory soup, generally for failures to make the sums add up rather than playing fast and loose with player salaries. Toulon, Biarritz, Bourgoin, Grenoble, Narbonne…they've all been there and felt the pain, to a greater or lesser extent.

Over here in England, our shop window concerns ply their trade in a mutually beneficial no-man's land: privately owned and secure in their pecking-order positions, they do not face the potential perils in place in France. And as they are not run as franchises, they can carry on regardless without finding themselves stuck on the upper slopes of Mount Doom.

If rugby holds fast to whatever belief it has left in the better natures of England's club owners, it may escape another crisis. But where will the sport be if that belief proves ill-founded? Now there's a question of the difficult kind.