For years the debate has raged over the merits of the Magners League and the Guinness Premiership, but now there is genuine fact to support those who see the Celtic competition as superior to the English top flight.

Take this season as far back as the November internationals. The only side to register a win in the entire programme for the northern hemisphere sides was Wales.

The side who came closest to making it two wins for the north was Munster’s second string - populated rather heavily with New Zealanders though it was - against the All Blacks’ midweek men.

Fast forward to the Six Nations. England were awful in places, better than awful in a few other areas, and excellent for one half out of ten.

The silverware was fought over by Wales and Ireland, almost all of whose players play in the much maligned Magners competition.

The Heineken Cup adds another supporting strut to the argument.

In the quarter finals, Leinster beat Harlequins, Munster and the Ospreys contested another of the ties, while Cardiff beat three-time champions Toulouse. Leicester, playing against English opposition, snuck through to drive the only English stake into semi-final territory.

Then came the Lions selection.

Twenty-seven of the thirty-seven names on Ian McGeechan’s list play their rugby in the Magners League.

I watch more Guinness Premiership rugby than I do Magners League. I have always scoffed at phone calls from colleagues in Wales or Ireland who suggest theirs is the better quality rugby, and I laughed earlier this year when Chris Paterson, the Scottish fullback who tried and failed to establish himself in the Premiership with Gloucester, went public with claims that the Magners League offered the better spectacle.

But can Premiership apologists continue to shrug these claims off any longer? Do the facts not speak for themselves this season? And if I actually watched more Magners League rugby, would I be so sure that I was right?

The Premiership has been busy these last few years packing stadiums and producing a brand of rugby that has gone through the roof in terms of entertainment compared to what used to be served up, and I would rank the atmosphere at last season’s Grand Final better than anything I experienced on the last Lions Tour and any home international seen since then.

As a polished product, it could be rightly pleased with itself that the previously  -supposedly - superior Super 14 was firmly in its sights. But while we all sat back and admired it, did we realise that the improvement was largely as a result of a considerable number of high class overseas imports?

As a result, the Magners League has tiptoed up on the rails and, as the makeup of the Lions squad shows, now produces the best of British and Irish talent.

A text from a friend midway through the first half at Twickenham on Saturday could, you felt, succinctly sum up the feeling of the entire crowd at England HQ.

“I’m speechless,” he began, before going on with such ferocity that suggested he was anything but. “This is the most unsatisfying game I’ve ever watched because the game is being determined by one man. How can you rate England on this? Mallett wants shooting for picking Bergamasco at No.9.”

This much was hard to argue with come the half-time whistle. Bergamasco had a hand – or not, in all three of England’s first half scores either by his wayward passing or simple lack of scrum-half nous.

With the Stade Francais man mercifully removed at half-time, we could at least expect a second half whereby England could be assessed on their own merits.

And that is the problem. When they were asked to create their own fortune, rather than profit from the errors of their opponents, England were awful.
 

In contrast to the selections of the autumn, Martin Johnson’s first Six Nations side looks much more like a team picked on form rather than in the hope that it would click.

Andy Goode’s selection at fly-half will grab most of the headlines, not all of them positive given the ever-present grumblings about a Leicester old-boys influence in the set-up and considering the facts that he has nine caps to his name, was never a first choice pick in his heyday and can be maddeningly erratic.

But if you want to deal in yet more facts, he is also the top points scorer in the French Top14, a league not bereft of fine No.10s, and he has achieved that playing in one of its mediocre teams.

Shane Geraghty is on the bench and has the ability to come on and ignite the game as he did in 2006 against France, but has probably not had enough game time to convince Johnson that he should start a match of such significance.

Goode may not have trod the Twickenham turf in an England shirt for over two years, but he his far more worldly when it comes to handling the pressures of intense media scrutiny from now ‘til kick-off and has more experience at dealing with the brickbats when it goes wrong – not that it should against Italy.

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There seems to have been seldom a moment when a dark cloud of some sort hasn’t lingered over English rugby in the last ten months.

Last April saw the abysmal handling of Brian Ashton’s departure from Twickenham before his successor, Martin Johnson, was left watching from afar as some of his players were accused of a serious sexual assault in New Zealand that summer.

Fears over what could emerge only eased after a lengthy investigation by the RFU and the decision of the complainant not to take the matter further.

With those memories fading, earlier this month another of Johnson’s elite squad, Mike Tindall, was banned from the roads for three years after a drink-driving offence.

And now Matt Stevens’ frank and, frankly, difficult to watch TV confession to a drugs problem following a positive test has plunged the highest level of the game into darkness again.

Internet message boards and newspaper columns have already begun searching for reasons why Stevens turned to drugs and many have argued the toss as to whether testing should even cover the use of non-performance enhancing substances.

If being a lonely young man in a city far from home and with a higher than average disposable income is the root cause of Stevens’ downfall, then his is the tip of a gargantuan iceberg in sport and wider society.

That alone makes the opinions of those who would rather see drugs of a non-performance enhancing nature wiped from the testers’ lists seem foolish in the extreme.

It was a day when events in Washington gobbled up far more air time and column inches than the admission of a failed drugs test by a relatively unknown sportsman, but there was one line from Barack Obama those responsible for handing out Stevens’ punishment - and those who report his wrongdoings - might like to dwell on: “People will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.”

A two-year ban seems the likely outcome for Stevens which will make him 28 when he is eligible to play again, more than enough time for Stevens and those around him to rebuild a player we were all expecting to become a key part of a side that has the potential to be the world’s best.

Stevens can return stronger from this. He made a mistake and deserves his punishment, but he shouldn’t be destroyed. He should be given the chance to put it right.

Not exactly much very bold about Martin Johnson’s changes to his 32-man Elite Player squad but nice to see Ben Foden included.

Other than that Johnson has principally used his five allotted changes to make permanent fixtures those who were called up due to injury in the autumn.

There seems little value in having retained Tom Rees when it is widely held that he will not recover from his lates knee injury until the very end of the RBS Six Nations.

It would have made more sense to bring the in-form Steffon Armitage in right away, but such are the befuddling rules that govern the number of changes Johnson is allowed to make the London Irish man is left in the Saxons with the crumb of comfort that if he stays fit over the next two weeks of European Cup rugby he will probably get the nod.

The root cause of England’s problems in the autumn was that any attacking ball they had was reduced to being used at a snail’s pace because of powderpuff rucking and forwards taking the ball from a standing start.

Armitage has shown in recent weeks that he detonates rucks like a bouncing bomb and comes on to the ball like a runaway train. He must be given his chance.

Elsewhere in the pack there have been no personnel changes that would genuinely shake things up but if Matt Stevens and Andrew Sheridan are called into Johnson's office and are seen hours later, scurrying from his door with reddened faces, then the message will have been sent that it's time their considerable reputations were matched by some far more considerable deeds.

It's also time to take the shackles off Dylan Hartley. He has a bigger presence than Lee Mears in scrum and loose and questions over his temperament will never really be answered until he is subjected to 80 minutes of rough stuff in arenas like Croke Park and the Millennium Stadium.

In the backs it is doubtful Foden will start given the outstanding form shown by Delon Armitage in the autumn but there is a strong case for Mike Tindall to come back into the side.

Jamie Noon offered little at outside centre in November and is playing in a Newcastle side woefully short of confidence and even shorter on quality.

Tindall is playing his best rugby since joining Gloucester and, as long as someone gives him a lift to Pennyhill Park, he should be harnessed with Riki Flutey in training to allow the pair to gel.

On the wings, Paul Sackey, purveyor of high-performance cars, is in danger of being overtaken by Mark Cueto, who ditched his own flash motor some while back to try and cure his back troubles.

It worked, and Cueto is red hot once again. On the other flank, no reason to drop Ugo Monye who now replaces the luckless James Simpson-Daniel who has once again fallen from view due to injury.


My starting side would go something like this:

Delon Armitage; Ugo Monye; Mark Cueto; Mike Tindall; Riki Flutey; Danny Cipriani; Danny Care; Nick Easter; Tom Croft; Steffon Armitage; Nick Kennedy; Steve Borthwick; Matt Stevens; Dylan Hartley; Andrew Sheridan