What a shame Warren Gatland isn’t still master of London Wasps. It would not be so easy for the Premiership’s apologists to write off this week’s assessment of English club rugby as just another frustrated dig because of his frustration at not being able to select Dwayne Peel for the New Zealand match.

For those who missed the Kiwi’s comments he said: “The Guinness Premiership is the weakest Premiership I’ve ever seen...” Just because the words were inflammatory does not mean they were anything other than true. I have had the dubious pleasure of watching every Premiership fixture to date and can confirm his perceptions and I really do not care whether Dwayne Peel plays for Wales or not.

I do care that the Guinness Premiership respond in the sort of cold corporate tones that drive sports supporters mad. Mark McCafferty, the chief executive of the Premier Rugby Association described the observation as a "cheap shot" before adding: “attendances are up 17% this year and one particular match – Saracens against Northampton at Wembley Stadium, there were more supporters there than in the entire Celtic League.”

So what? I am sure Robbie Williams has sold more CDs than Beethoven in the last decade. Am I supposed to see this as proof that a song such as Millenium is somehow superior to say, The Moonlight Sonata? Each to his own Mark but the numbers theory has nothing to do with the quality.

The English retort has been to point the finger at the Magners League but Gatland at no stage either said that the criticism of one league implied praise of the other. Why such nervousness? Why not just laugh it off as one of Gatland’s famous verbal jousts such as the one with which he provoked Ireland prior to last season’s Wales versus Ireland fixture?

Well for a start its timing illustrates it has little to do with any subtle attempt to irritate England and it’s not the sort of comment designed to make the Premiership relent and backtrack over Peel.

It is awkward and it is annoying because it hits the mark, bull’s-eye. When Gatland was at Wasps, to be an outstanding Premiership performer was to be worthy of international honours; that is not the case at this moment in time. The standards have slipped. There is a lack of ambition in attack and a lack of vision overall. It has paved the way to rugby’s version of hell, the two-fold horror of the slow sealing-off process and the dire spectacle of the purgatorial kicking game, where each side waits for the other to make an error rather than daring to trust in their own attack. In defences most Premiership teams trust and little else. How else are a team as limited in their aspirations as Saracens currently so loftily placed? It sums the league up perfectly.

Not that there is anything wrong with great organisation and a focused defence. This is no plea for running the ball from side to side but there is something very wrong when a defence fails to be tested. London Irish have a fine and serrated defensive system that in Premiership terms can appear impregnable as it did, last week, against Leicester. But in round two of the Heineken Cup they were sliced opened by the struggling Scarlets because the men from West Wales trusted their strengths on the counter attack and did not kick back aimlessly but ran into space. The result was mayhem as the Irish forwards, so used to standing in that limbo between the two sets of kickers, took their usual breather until someone makes a kicking error or an inadvertent counter attack. The Welsh side countered brilliantly and picked static opponents off. Suddenly the foolproof Premiership defensive system was in tatters.

Why hush the deficiencies up? This was a lesson learnt and one from which precocious London Irish will benefit but to claim it as an off day would be to consign defeat to the realms of wasted days. As London Irish will learn so too can the English clubs from a coach with the track record of Gatland. He is probably closer to Shaun Edwards than any other man in rugby. He would not be making such bold assertions unless the element of truth was a robust one.

Since January 1 2004, I have been frustrated by the manner in which all England’s international woes somehow ended up being blamed upon the clubs. The clubs, by and large, have played in a manner suitable for players stepping up to international rugby. There have been times when Gatland’s Wasps were coming down a level to play for England. That is no longer the case and it is certainly not because the national team has become a more sophisticated operation.

Somehow, like a virus, the slow, safe and utterly unusable trickle of steady possession under which England has failed to assert itself through the era of steady skippers such as Martin Corry and Steve Borthwick, has slipped into the bloodstream of club rugby. It is not terminal and England – both club and country – will shake it off but Warren is right; English rugby, for all its crowds, is not at its rosiest right now.