He, together with his chief executive Francis Baron, whose behaviour during this shabby episode has raised serious doubts about his suitability for the job, must, because of their positions, take the brunt of the criticism. But what about the council members, who left their meeting on the Thursday evening thinking that they had empowered their representatives in Dublin the following day, Malcolm Phillips and John Jeavons-Fellows, to place on record England's acceptance of the accord?If the council were confused it was hardly surprising. The bulk of the meeting that Thursday had been taken up in discussing proposals for the restructuring of the committee system - a charter for the lunatics to increase their influence in the asylum - at the very time when England were about to be blown out of the Five Nations' Championship. Cue Nero with fiddlers and a supermarket trolley.Some of those responsible for taking England to the brink last week were the very same men who had brought about their expulsion three years ago. They are the same men whose carefully concealed agenda is to bring the Five Nations' Championship to its knees and to abandon it for fresh pastures. Despite the fact that the RFU's unilateral television deal with BSkyB has cost the game in Britain and Ireland the millions of pounds which would have been realised from collective bargaining and has also lost it many more millions of viewers, this vicious skirmish was not about the distribution of television money or whether France were signatories to the agreement or what would happen when Italy joined the party.

Red herrings all.When the accord was signed in 1996 the process for dealing with all these issues was agreed and put in place. It was that same process which was finally accepted by England last week. The true agenda was much more sinister.There are those within the RFU who did not wish to sign up to a 10-year agreement for the Five/Six Nations' Championship because their interest lay in establishing an alternative five nations alliance involving England, France, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. They hoped that by the time the RFU's agreement with Sky had expired in 2001, the plans would be in place.The big issue so far as the RFU were concerned, although few of the council would have recognised it, centred on whether England should sign up to a 10-year commitment to Europe or set their sights on a tournament embracing the southern-hemisphere powers.What the conspirators had not reckoned on, of course, was the rapid deterioration in England's relationships with the rest of the world and whereas six months ago the thought of such a union might have appealed, it is now inconceivable that South Africa, New Zealand and Australia would entertain such an idea. The RFU's subservience to their leading clubs and the baleful influence that those clubs have been exerting over the game both at home and overseas have played a major role in isolating England.They are alone in their misery. Almost certainly there will be more to come, not only from the International Board, who will deliver their verdict on the RFU later this week but from within their own ranks, where the Reform Group yesterday called for the management board to step down and the pressure for a vote of no-confidence in the leadership is getting stronger.Those who seek to dismiss the events of the past week and, for that matter, the past couple of years, as a childish spat to be sorted out simply by knocking a few thick heads together are ever so slightly missing the point.This is not a little local difficulty. The future of rugby is at stake here and although a Glasgow hostelry may not have been the most appropriate setting for reaching a settlement, we should at least be thankful that the Five Nations' Championship appears to have been saved.

Unfortunately, recent experience has shown that whatever the RFU stands for, the name can no longer be associated with integrity, decency and honour.. LEGS OF glass and a heart of steel made the Victor Chandler Chase a contest worth waiting for. The two-mile handicap, often a pointer to the divisional title, finally took place here yesterday after being wiped out twice by the weather at its usual home, Ascot. And the performance of the winner Call Equiname and the squad behind him was enough to keep anyone warm on a winter day.

The big grey gelding, trained in Somerset by Paul Nicholls, is now unbeaten in his four runs over fences. But his his diamond-bright talent is inversely fragile; before yesterday, he was last seen in public in November 1997. "He suffers badly from leg trouble," said Nicholls' wife, Bridget, "and we have to tread carefully with him. Our head lad Clifford Burke rides him every day, knows him backwards and is the only one allowed on his back at home and the owners have been brilliantly patient." With Robert Thornton taking over from the stable jockey Joe Tizzard - on unsuccessful duty with Nicholls at Haydock - Call Equiname, who runs in the purple and yellow of Mick Coburn, was always travelling and jumping well as Get Real, the favourite, led the field of seven round the tight Sunbury triangle. He cruised past Celibate and Flying Instructor going to the second last and was poised to take the leader in the air when he made his sole error at the final obstacle.A slight hesitation allowed Get Real, receiving 16lb, to regain the lead, but Call Equiname responded to Thornton's driving and battled back to win by a neck.

"He was a bit tight into the last," said the rider, taking the mount for the first time, "but he snapped up like a clever horse and got away from the fence quickly. It might even have helped because I was told he tends to idle in front."In the past decade such luminaries as Waterloo Boy, Martha's Son, Ask Tom and Viking Flagship have won the Victor Chandler and Call Equiname will now follow their trail to Cheltenham for the Queen Mother Champion Chase - for which he has entered the betting lists at around 7-1 - though his precious forelegs will not emerge from their cotton-wool until then. "The ground was plenty soft enough for him today," added Mrs Nicholls, "and he will be better on better going."Thornton, who named yesterday's Grade Two success as the most important landmark in his burgeoning career, doubled up on another Nicholls trainee, Flagship Uberalles, in the opening novices' two-mile chase. The five-year- old, a half-brother to Viking Flagship, took his chasing record to two from three in comfortably accounting for Eagles Rest despite a rather novicey lurch over the last. He has the Arkle Trophy at Cheltenham pencilled in.But the jockey's achievements were overshadowed, numerically, by his weighing-room colleague Mick Fitzgerald, who rounded off a short-priced treble, instigated by the impressive novice chaser Marlborough and novice hurdler Kingsmark, on Tiutchev in the Lanzarote Handicap Hurdle.