From top to bottom, rugby union is now staring into the abyss | Robert Kitson

From the best-run Premiership club to the grassroots, all parts of the game are in peril but not all its ills can be pinned on Covid

There is nothing quite like a pandemic for exposing hard, uncomfortable truths. And, give or take stand-up comedians, nightclub owners and first year university students, few face a bleaker midwinter than sports that live or die by people entering their stadiums each weekend. The word “catastrophe” usually jars in the context of mere athletic pursuits but increasingly, in rugby, there is no ducking it.

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the depth of the abyss into which much of the game – professional and amateur – in Britain and Ireland is now staring. At every level it relies, in sickness or in health, on the top of the pyramid delivering for the benefit of all. So when the Rugby Football Union, until recently the wealthiest union in the world, says a government bail-out is needed to prop up the whole edifice a chill shiver should run down the spine of everyone with an oval-shaped heart.

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