BARROW Raiders’ promotion push may be the main talking point among local rugby fans, but it is a fair bet that it is way down the list on any planning agenda over in Leeds.

They have bigger issues to worry about.

If just one of the latest rush of rumours now in circulation turns out to be true, then we could be heading for yet another round of shake-ups.

Long-term planning has never been the sport’s strength – whoever is in charge – but there is a crisis looming at the top and it is all down to the loss of one (and possibly two) of the Super League’s biggest flag bearers.

Bradford Bulls, who were the first to embrace the whole idea of summer rugby and its attendant carnival atmosphere – are heading for League One.

In Super League, they could add at least 10,000 to every weekend attendance figure.

The same goes for Catalan Dragons, welcomed as the success story of French rugby league, but now hanging on to their Super League status by their fingernails after a miserable performance against Leigh.

They could well be heading for relegation to the Championship, which would give the game three overseas teams – Dragons, Toulouse and Toronto – and none of them in the elite division next season.

So, unless there is a re-think such as an expansion of Super League to 14 or 16 clubs or the return of licensing, (effectively killing off hopes of more than two thirds of the league (including Cumbria’s three teams) of ever joining the top table, then we are in for another year of Where Do We Go From Here?

Champions of licensing are normally the people who think that the folk of every major city in Europe – and even North America –cannot wait to join the party. There is never any evidence to back this up, by the way.

Meanwhile, Barrow hope to escape from a division where Sunday’s attendances at six matches (Raiders and Toronto not included) totalled just 1,783. Just 65 of those went to see Oxford’s draw with South Wales.

I have hopes that this Saturday’s Challenge Cup final at Wembley will offer some entertaining relief from the problems facing the men at Red Hall, but as it would take the wisdom of Solomon to sort this lot out, I don’t envy them their return to the office next week.

ENGLAND win by an innings and 209 runs. It will look good in the record books and in future editions of Wisden, won’t it?

It took less than three full days and was, in sporting parlance, a massacre, a hammering, a drubbing, a humiliation – all four of those would be the perfect fit.

But were England really that good, or were the opposition so hopelessly out of their depth that they simply surrendered at the first chance they got?

For those of us who still believe that Test matches are the only form of proper cricket – and here I expect opposition from supporters of those worldwide competitions for mercenaries, that new kid on the block T20 – the events at Edgbaston over those three days were nothing to get excited about.

The West Indies lost 19 wickets in a single day, Stuart Broad overtook Ian Botham in the list of wicket-takers and Alastair Cook hit a double century.

Yet in the words of former Windies bowling legend Sir Curtly Ambrose, “It was all downhill after the first hour.”

The lands that gave us Gary Sobers, Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Michael Holding, Lance Gibbs and Ambrose himself – plus, for those of you even older, the Calypso twins Ramadhin and Valentine – and too many others to fit in here – are now ranked eighth on the list of Test playing countries, ahead of only Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.

Cook batted for nearly four hours longer than the entire Windies two innings.

So, while the game’s ruling bodies tinker with pink balls, day-night Tests and modern technology, they have a far more important job ahead – find out what has happened to the game in the Caribbean. Even if they cannot dig up another Sobers, at least they should find enough players to last more than the first hour of a Test.

THAT'S it – it’s all over. Manchester United are the new Premier League champions.

Don’t believe me? Well, try this. Jose Mourinho always wins titles in his second season at a club. This is his second season at Old Trafford and United’s best start for more than 100 years. They are top of the league with eight goals in two games.

But most of all – and here I am grateful to the Daily Mail for the headline – You Can’t Catch Jose when he’s Ahead.

So – Pep, Antonio, Arsene, Mauricio, Jurgen, pack your bags and head for the beaches until the FA Cup starts, because after two games Manchester United are the champs after beating the might of West Ham and Swansea.

Actually, I’ll reserve my guess for a few weeks but there is just a good chance that United could end up being the second best team in Manchester.