The Five Nations Championship could be reduced to four because of new politicking, with the English Rugby Football Union again at the centre of the row.
England have been summoned to a meeting of the Five Nations committee in Dublin on Friday when they could be expelled from the tournament only two years after its future was supposedly secured.
The rumpus has blown up following the cash-strapped RFU's failure to pool the money they are receiving from Sky for televising the championship matches staged at Twickenham.
Ireland, Scotland and Wales claim they are owed between £2 million and £6 million and have taken their case to arbitration, but the main source of contention is the desire of the RFU to rip up the agreement which they signed in 1997 binding them to the tournament for 10 years.
The England manager Roger Uttley expressed surprise and disappointment after being dismissed by the RFU yesterday.
Uttley has lost his part-time job - his main occupation is master at Harrow school - in a major cost-cutting exercise which will see 30 employees made redundant or take early retirement. Don Rutherford, the RFU's 61-year-old director of rugby, has also gone along with three other departmental directors and 11 managers.
The reduction in Twickenham's 191 staff has been carried out by Francis Baron, the recently appointed chief executive, with the support of the RFU management board. Twickenham expects to lose £2.3 million in the current financial year.
The RFU Council will be reduced from 59 to 46 with a further cut to 43 in 2001.
Awaiting the winners of today's Ravenhill tie is a European Cup final appointment later this month with either Colomiers or Perpignan, who clash in Toulouse today.
The second-tier European Shield is now all all-French affair, with tomorrow's semi-finals sending 1997 European Cup winners Brive to Bourgoin and Montferrand hosting Narbonne.
In the English Cup tomorrow, Bristol, currently top of Premiership Two, host London Irish, the in-form Premiership One club, having won both previous cup ties between the clubs - 14-3 (1975/76) and 45-16 (1988/89). It looks the tie of the round.
