Comment: Allan Massie on rugby’s increased aping of football

Inexorably, year by year, even month by month, professional rugby is getting more and more like the top level of professional football. Players’ salaries are not yet on the ridiculous astronomical scale of footballers’ ones, but, even at a time of very low inflation, they are rising fast. Just as football provides a road from rags to riches for young players from Latin America and Africa so, too, does rugby for South Sea Islanders.