The rest of England - that is the overwhelming majority who know not the whys or wherefores of this comparatively obscure pastime - will be enjoying the spat between Twickenham's Young Fogeys and the Old Farts. First to back down is a cissy.

But make no mistake, England's rugby union players' strike threat is for real. And if the Fogeys rout the Farts, administrators of far more popular and more professional, sponsor-driven spectator sports will be seen to wince. Player-power is a potent turbulence to let loose.

Since Twickenham, against its better judgment, let the genie out of the bottle five autumns ago, it was always going to be a matter of time till a greedy anarchy seized its leading, full-time worker-players.

With reason, the Rugby Football Union, which administrates, finances and nurtures the whole enterprise right down to the Extra B XVs, must presume itself - for all its faults - to be the most important group in the game. Not so, say the two dozen players in England shirts.

Mind you, those who witnessed their World Cup surrenders last season - at Murrayfield and in Paris - were not surprised yesterday to hear that the England militants were threatening to strike because they prefer the assurance of banking their oodles of boodle solely for turning up as "appearance" money rather than in the form of win bonuses. One even had the brass neck yesterday to suggest their demands were based on the sentiment of safeguarding the generations to come.

Anyway, now we know why the England XV to a man celebrated with such deranged over-the-toppery on scoring that disputed injury-time try on Saturday against 13 Australians. Industrial action over an appearance fee/win bonus wrangle would not have been quite so bright an idea had it come after another lame defeat.

If neither side capitulates this morning - and from this distance I fancy the RFU will, spinelessly, be the one to give in and sue for peace - then Saturday's match against Argentina will obviously have to be cancelled. No reserve player will dare "scab" on his heroes. And anyway, no senior English club will allow any player on its books to help out a loathed and wounded Twickenham.

But if this Saturday's substantial crowd - plus the sell-out 70,000 for the match against South Africa next week - has to have its money refunded in full, costing the millions the players want a bigger slice of, then the strikers will be doubly arraigned, and denied another nice chunk from the hand that feeds them.

One boast which had the rest of the nation on a roar of mirth as they drove home listening on their car radios to these already wealthy young strikers putting their case for poverty, was their presumed comparison to the earnings of Premiership footballers. Utterly idiotic.

Last Saturday week, rugby union staged the fifth round of its Tetley's Cup competition. The biggie, the tie of the round, its Arsenal v Man United, was Gloucester v Leicester: 5,000 or so turned up. Only 1,489 bothered to watch the great Harlequins. For one of the seven cup ties only 250 assailed the turnstiles. In all seven, only 22,420 were watching. On the same afternoon, the eight matches of soccer's Premiership attracted 270,894.

And yet . . . somehow in their haughty presumptions yesterday these men do have a point. All through the past five squalid years of senior rugby union, with committee-room blood-letting amid megalomaniac paranoia, it is the players who have simply got on with playing. In a way they have saved the game from itself.

Which makes yesterday's anarchic threats all the more crazy. Surely they should play on while continuing to negotiate their "rights", which anyway seem mighty generous. They are more, for starters, than any other international rugby union squad.

Whatever today's outcome, should any of the three shop-steward ringleaders - Dawson, Johnson or Dallaglio - be invited to captain England again? Well, in sport, there are priorities and, well, priorities. And if everything revolves round money and anarchy, we might as well all stay home on Saturdays and take up jigsaws or gardening.