The Thick of It Awards

The black tie 'do' attended by we plebs as a celebration of total rugby mismanagement:

Nomination 1. Professional Rugby Ltd. Citation: "PRL has a string of celebrated goofs which would merit a lifetime achievement award in its own right just for short-sighted vision in decision-making. This particular nomination is for the ham-fisted manner of the BT Vision negotiations for 'a better deal for everyone' whilst being party to the signing-off of the ERC deal with Sky for HEC broadcasting. Armando Iannucci was bereft of suffecient praise to laud this stranger-than-life humongous c0ck-up. [note to Armando - it happened mate. Yes it really did]"
The clear front-runner.

Nomination 2. Irish Rugby Football Union. Citation: "In celebration of an emerging profile in World rugby, the IRFU displayed a supreme level of mismanagement which belies its own professed aims and objectives. In replacing its own national stadium on the site of its old one, at a stroke it both reduced its capacity to that more suitable to a state like Liechtenstein and were celebrating monster attendances at Croke Park."

Nomination 3. The Rugby Football Union. Citation: "For serial mismanagement, the RFU has few (if any) peers. This particular nomination is for despite twenty years of shamateurism and full-blown professionalism, the management retains a stolid and predictable tradition of half-baked quick-fix solutions via inappropriate appointments, ineffectual structures and the belief that competence is not required in anyone's' CV. The cart-before-the-horse, the preservation-of-old-buffers-G&Ts-and-unmerited-world-freebies, and huff-puffing-of-any-anti-fundamental-root-and-branch-change policies is highly commended as a paragon of continual rugby mismanagement virtue."

Nomination 4. The Welsh Rugby Union. Citation: "For the misunderstanding of the nature of its own sport in clubs, players, supporters and ethos, the WRU has, whilst maintaining an international profile, created a monsterous vacuum of public interest which has breathed oxygen into soccer."

Nomination 5. The Scottish Rugby Football Union. Citation: "The nomination commends the SRFU to negotiate its way into a one one way street of permanent decline. Especial commendations are: The abandonment of the Borders as a region (a triumph of mismanagement) and the failure to negotiate with Welsh and English club rugby to engender the procreation of increasing talent."