THE International Rugby Board have got to do something about the replacement rule because it is having an adverse effect on the game.

In fact, it is even spoiling rugby, particularly at international level which is the shop window.

The whole thing reached farcical proportions on Saturday when Wales used all seven replacements and Italy just one fewer.

At one stage eight replacements went on in 11 minutes and it all meant the final half-an-hour of the game was wrecked.

Any flow, any continuity disappeared completely and what had been an entertaining game merely petered out.

You can hardly blame the coaches for merely enforcing the regulations, but they still have some responsibility.

What was the point, for example, in sending Spencer John on for the final three minutes plus injury time?

Apart from causing confusion and spoiling the game as a spectacle it serves to cheapen the value of a cap.

They are far too easy to come by and maybe the ease of it all explains in some cases why there appears to be a lack of hunger.

A cap is no longer something to die for, in so many words, and maybe performance suffers as a result.

Replacements should only be allowed onto the field if there is an injury and a doctor has ruled that a player cannot continue.

As it is, the rules are at best being exploited, at worst flouted.

The England management worked their socks off to ensure skipper Martin Johnson was on the field in France despite being banned for throwing a punch which opened up a cut near the eye of an opponent.

There was even outrage within the RFU committee, but it did England no good as they flopped badly.

It could be considered that England have achieved a Grand Slam, a grand slam of four successive defeats to deny them that achievement.

All the other countries, bar latecomers Italy have had a go - Wales first up, then Scotland, Ireland and now France.

The team rated the best in the world cant manage to win the European crown. What future now for Clive Woodward?

And as far all this about Jonny Wilkinson being up among the great outside-halves, Ive never heard such nonsense.

To mention him in the same breath as the likes of David Watkins, Barry John, Phil Bennett and Jonathan Davies is a crime.

They were all instinctive players, wonderful side-stepping runners to whom the unusual, the different became the norm.

They were all mesmerising runners capable of unlocking any defence, in the case of Watkins under the rules which existed when he had the opposing wing forward of the time arriving at roughly the same time as the ball.

Wilkinson is much more programmed, more of a machine, as is Neil Jenkins for that matter.

Wilkinson is a product of the age in which he lives perhaps, efficient for sure but one of the best the world has seen? Never.

One of Englands best, maybe, but a genuinely great outside half? Again, never.