After all that's what the impending relegation play offs are like although instead of winning a bucket load of cash, the contestant gets the chance to lose everything.

The sums might not be as handsome but if you're Birmingham & Solihull and you're basically existing on RFU money anyway, the drop from £300,000 to £0, the price of relegation to the community game, makes you a Nillionaire over-night.

The TV show and the play-offs share the same sort of arbitrary structure too. Just as there is no logic other than greed behind Chris Tarrant's hateful quiz, there is only one possible reason behind forcing Rotherham and Moseley to play Coventry and Bees. As a weekend filler.

But the main, grim, similarity is that both competitions are utterly compelling. Just as the West Midlands manufacturing industry is in terrible disrepair, so too is its rugby.

Assuming anyone gets round to playing some rugby.

And at that point I'd just like to place on record just how much I'm looking forward to previewing matches for a second - and in the case of Bees and Rotherham a third - time.

Let's start the first TWP of the year with a game of pretend. Let's imagine for a while some games will be played this weekend.

If I really get a taste for it I could find myself at Reading FC's Mad Stad tomorrow and the Memorial Stadium, home to Bristol Rovers, on Sunday.

I wonder if anyone's ever become a member of The 92 Club without watching a game of football.

But back to Coventry. Just another week down the Butts really, unpaid tax bill, administration (no, liquidation, no neither (Who knows?)), unpaid players and all the rest. How do they fill their time over there?

Well they'll fill this evening beginning the second half of their Championship campaign and hoping they'll be around to finish it.

Moseley will be looking to reverse the 5-6 win-loss ratio from the opening section and in doing so have a crack at winning the promotion play offs.

And Bees, it's a bit early in the year for green shoots you know, will look forward to playing and then not playing Bristol again in a season with more twists and turns than a Dan Brown rewrite of a Tolstoy classic.

Meanwhile Stour continue to power their way through the most expensively assembled packs in the community game - that'll sting a few down at Stourton Park. At least they do so in a proper rugby club.

Anyway back to the football grounds, wonder if we'll see much kicking this weekend?

Still that's the price we pay for blanket television coverage of the sport. When the cameras come calling rugby lifts it skirt and moves the kick-off. What's that you say? There are no games being broadcast live? Some mistake surely.

Sadly not, those who want to see how Coventry and Heriot's get on or how Moseley fair with Ulster must actually turn up in person. Quite right too, says I.

Whether I'm still saying that this evening is another matter. The Worcester-Saracens match has all the entertainment potential of a three-hour Spot the Ball in the Air competition.

Perhaps the posh seats in the West Stand should be fitted with recliners to negate the risk of their inhabitants sustaining a strained neck and affording them the opportunity to drop off in comfort.

And given the fact matches involving Heriot's in this competition average just five points - that might be one to miss too.

At least there's defence-free Moseley to inject a few tries into proceedings.

Let's hope they wear their famous Red and Black tonight because they didn't want to get their nice white jerseys dirty last Friday night.

And what of Bees-Cardiff? I'm sure there'll be some tries in that one!

The plan only works folks if none of your competitors are doing the same thing.

As it is any floating voter living in Bromsgrove would be in the intersection of an oval ball Venn diagram not knowing whether to spend their evening in Coventry, Moseley or Worcester.

Me? Me and my new coat are up Chillesley Common watching Moseley and London Welsh play each other for the fourth time in eight months.

But that's the beauty of the British and Irish Cup, some get Munster at home - a genuinely exciting prospect - and others....well, don't.

And let's be honest, who knows what's going to happen? How good are Ulster A, how bad are Heriot's FP reserves? Do Bees and Moseley have any fringe players?

Nevertheless, here goes...

Looking back at my last entry, entitled 'Time to walk the talk' it is clear most of the region's sides were only capable to limp the whimp(er).

Moseley failed to beat London Welsh, Harlequins won at Worcester and Stour were thrashed at Wharfedale.

But all that is in the dim and distant past. Last Saturday was marked by Boo-Gate - did they didn't they? - an appalling Worcester performance and the weekly Manchester Try Fest at Stourton Park.

But Round Nine will go down as The Chip, with the nation's cameras and the entire Bristol defence trained on him and his goal-line, Joey Carlisle impudently chipped his way out of a hole and took his Coventry team 70m downfield.

They say the border between genius and madness is a thin one and - with both feet just on the wrong side of the divide - here are this week's predictions.

This weekend, with the exception of Bees - who will struggle at Cornish Pirates - all of the West Midlands' teams have matches they need to win if they are to achieve their season's ambitions.

If Sixways is to become the fortress Mike Ruddock desires, Quins must be dispatched.

If Coventry are to finish in the top eight of the Championship, Plymouth at home should be a banker and if Moseley are to maintain their current form London Welsh have to considered as the most vulnerable of the powerhouses.

And incredibly Stour go looking to win a sixth straight fixture at Wharfedale.

Clearly I would have predicted all the results correctly and trust you have enough faith in my crystal ball gazing ability to grant me a perfect five from five.

No? It's a fair cop.

I honestly expected Worcester to beat Montpellier and Plymouth to leave Moseley with four points and I can't claim with a clear conscience I'd have backed Coventry to win at Doncaster.

A good week to be ill then, you might say.

Let's see what happens this weekend...

And of course there could be the last ever game for the current Bees vintage, unless they can unravel their financial tangle that has dragged them to the precipice.

Whilst not wishing to blow my own trumpet, I think I'm due a surreptitious little 'toot' following a 100 per cent return from last week that included correct predictions for Moseley's win over Doncaster and Worcester's over Sale.

That's 14 out of 15 so far this season. OK trumpet down.

And this week...

Boo. Optimism overcame me and my first wrong prediction was made for the Wasps-Worcester clash. If only Mike Ruddock hadn't told his men to launch an aerial bombardment it might have been a different story.

From now on, no favouring the Midlands sides.

Five more matches this weekend and perhaps the least clear cut set of matches. Worcester could win or lose at home to Sale, as could Moseley with Doncaster and possibly even Coventry at Cornish Pirates.

This weekend's games pit the country's haves against the Midlands' have-nots and once again it's difficult to predict much success for our local sides.

As for last week, I correctly guessed all five outcomes though no margins of victory.

Bees were a surprise taking Bristol to within four points while I though Mose would get much closer to Pirates.

Here's this week's matches.

That doesn't leave me much time or space to make my own observations, something I intend to rectify from today onwards in this blog.

Each week I'll take a step down the route marked 'Professional Suicide' and assess the main rugby matches involving our leading teams and will respond to any comments made by readers.

At the end of Professional Suicide I'll turn right and head down Prediction Alley, known to all journalists to be a dead end.

So here goes....and remember folks, it's only my opinion:

I, like many people, am gobsmacked that Richards has involved himself in such shenanigans, though considerably less so that one of the leading professional clubs has been caught out.

The financial pressures placed on teams to win Heineken Cup and Premiership matches is always going to filter down to the coaching and playing staff and the temptation to do something underhand intensifies as the stakes become higher.

Richards' involvement is testament to that because in my experience, even as a frustrated Scotland fan when he used to deny us Grand Slams for fun - he has always demonstrated high integrity.

White smoke is expected to emanate from the game's tallest chimneys at some stage tomorrow, in support of the preference made by RWC Ltd.

Yet confirmation of the most done of deals and the opportunity to see the world's finest oval ball exponents will leave me with a sense that our sport has been jilted.

In including just two club stadiums - Leicester and Gloucester - and eight football arenas on its schedule the RFU has effectively sold the game out when it had an opportunity to show everything that is great about English rugby.