Football may be the most popular game on earth, but where the rulebook, discipline and forward thinking are concerned, rugby invariably leaves it standing. Well, almost invariably.

One of the rare exceptions is the woolly thinking of the Guinness Premiership organisers, who for the most valuable of reasons (money!) have decided in their wisdom that the team finishing top are not the champions.

Instead, poor old Gloucester, who finished the regular season one point ahead of nearest rivals Leicester, were thrown into the pot with their the rest of the top four in a play-off lottery. Result - Gloucester and Leicester won their respective semi-finals against Saracens and Bristol to earn the right to battle it out for the Premiership title at Twickenham.

To any sensible thinking person, Gloucester won the title by scoring more points than anyone else over the league campaign


Fair play to Leicester, they deserved their 44-16 victory on Saturday - and will probably go on to complete a unique treble next week by beating Wasps and winning the Heineken Cup. But can they truly call themselves English champions when they only finished second in the league? Of course not - to any sensible thinking person, Gloucester won the title by scoring more points than anyone else over the league campaign.

Can you imagine the reaction from Sir Alex Ferguson if the Premiership authorities decided Manchester United are not, after all, champions - but will now have to play-off against Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal to win the crown? That legendary hair-dryer would blow the entire competition to smithereens!

If the idea of the Guinness Premiership play-offs is to generate more income, then by all means run it as a separate competition. Maybe call it the Champion of Champions Trophy, or something similar. But to deprive Gloucester of the title they so richly deserve is little short of criminal.

The west-country side had to battle it out at Twickenham without their inspirational captain Marco Bortolami, who failed to recover from a knee injury suffered in the semis. And the outcome was on the cards from the moment Leicester scrum-half Frank Murphy - standing in for crocked England ace Harry Ellis - scored a highly-debatable try after 10 minutes

They went on to score six more, two of them from Samoan battering ram Alesana Tuilagi, who deservedly won the man-of-the-match award. So there was little doubting who were the better side on the day. But that should have been irrelevant because the trophy should have been bedecked in Cherry and White at least two weeks earlier.

Leicester will now inevitably sweep all before them with a unique treble after winning the EDF Energy Cup a few weeks ago. And few would deny that at their peak, they are the best club side in the country. I also have absolutely no complaints against them, because they were only playing to the rulebook.

But Gloucester, if it’s any consolation, you are champions in my book - and in the eyes of thousands of other fans who believe justice has not been done.

Should the team finishing top of the Guinness Premiership be declared champions - or is the play-off system a good idea? Leave a comment below or, better still,  write an article for Sportingo.