So here we are, nine rounds into this season’s Gallagher Premiership, and we have the tightest, most extraordinary relegation contest since the leagues began. Suck it up and enjoy it for all it is worth, because it may just be that fans of the English Premiership will never get anything like it again.

With the most sublime irony, the clubs are in the process of giving the watching public a competition that is more compellingly desperate and broadly nerve-racking than anything they have seen before, and yet they are simultaneously attempting to legislate so that nothing like this can ever happen again.

Newcastle Falcons are bottom. The next six clubs are only four points or fewer ahead. Any one of these could be relegated and