Martin Johnson's season started on 12 August last year, when Leicester played Cardiff in a special challenge match between the English and Welsh champions.

Barring injury, it will end next Saturday in the third Test between the Lions and the Wallabies, eleven months after it began.

Next season doesn't start until 1 September.

At the end of it he won't have a six week trip with the Lions but he could have a month with England in the South Seas.

Any relief he might feel at the apparent lessening of his workload will be tempered by the knowledge that the powers that be are bent on squeezing two more high profile fixtures into his crowded schedule.

The International Rugby Board has declared its backing for an annual fixture between northern and southern hemispheres.

At the same time the Australian Rugby Union has announced that plans for an annual fixture between the Super 12 winners and the Heineken Cup winners could be in place as early as next January, when the competing teams would be Johnson's Leicester and the ACT Brumbies.

The latter fixture makes sense. The former does not. There is an obvious logic to a challenge match between the winners of the two biggest tournaments outside international rugby.

Although, because of the distance involved, there's likely to be few away supporters, such a match would invariably invoke the tribal loyalties of all great sporting contests.

The latter would not engage the passions in the same way.

International Board chairman Vernon Pugh is right in saying that a vast proportion of rugby reporting highlights the difference between northern and hemisphere rugby, usually with regard to interpretations of law.

Lucrative

There must be powerful political factions within the Board that naturally align themselves across the north-south divide. But that doesn't mean that there should be a match between the two hemispheres.

In fact, as Pugh, admits it's a money-making exercise. Pugh believes that, sooner or later, the concept was bound to get off the drawing-board.

By promoting it in-house, he believes that the IRB are at least retaining control of a potentially lucrative fixture while, more importantly ensuring that the money it generates goes to a good cause.

He has promised that any profits will be used for the development of the game worldwide.

So that's all right then.

The fact that, outside of a few rugby aficionados, few players or pundits will be remotely interested in such an artificial contest cuts no ice.

The fact that there is already too much high-profile rugby being played matters not a jot.

Pugh declared at the same briefing how concerned the IRB was about devaluing its prime product, international rugby, and how concerned it was about burn-out to its prime asset, the players. It sure has a funny way of showing it.