The Tri Nations was not so much created as hatched. It was the key part of the plot that turned the game professional back in 1995. The three big southern hemisphere unions - New Zealand, Australia and South Africa - were fully and professionally signed up to it at the same time as the rest of the world was still enjoying an amateur World Cup in South Africa. The Tri Nations and its feeder, the Super 12, were going to happen with or without the blessing of the International Rugby Board.

The big three, of course, won that day. Because they were the best. And the prospect of dropping the north into chaos for a decade was preferable to seeing the south break away for ever.

The talk now is of anything but global schism. It is more or less taken for granted, as our Six Nations becomes increasingly a two-team shoot-out, that England and France will disengage from Europe and join the southern circus. Which will, of course, become the great Five Nations of the new age.

Without wishing to be too disrespectful towards the Tri Nations competition that has indeed shoved back the boundaries of the game and generally been a force for good, it does come as something of a relief to find that its laundry is not entirely stain-resistant. From race rows to drug scandals, rugby life southern-style is not quite as slick as it once appeared.

You might think, given the revelations in Francois Pienaar's book about drugs in South African rugby, plus the more globally exposed matter of apartheid, that both matters might be confined to that country.

But no, the race affair has affected New Zealand, while the proscribed drug probenecid was taken by Ben Tune of Australia.

John Mitchell, the relatively new coach of the All Blacks, has been taken to task by former scrum-half Chris Laidlaw for picking whites above Maori players or Islanders. You might sum up the argument by saying that he dropped Jonah Lomu. Mitchell denies the charge, which is easier to do when your team are winning, as his are, but race is a prickly subject even in easygoing New Zealand.

And as for Tune's dodgy knee, his unwitting intake of a banned substance 18 months ago is probably not the case that is going to expose drug abuse in rugby. But a rising volume of gossip suggests that such a scandal is waiting to break in every country where young players are told that the offer of a pro contract depends on a rapid increase in muscle and bulk.

It remains to be seen whether England or France's transfer to southern competition would be influenced by such distasteful topics. If the money were right, they would probably go, even if the move disgusted fans for whom the annual short-haul hops around the Six Nations are sacred.

But on the very issue of dosh, the Six Nations of old Europe holds the trump cards. This remains the treasure-store of rugby. If we're going to be professional about it - as the Tri Nation countries were back in 1995 - there's only one place where rugby is going one day to be big business on a significant level and that's here in our own backyard.