Rugby Union: Trials ahead for players' advocate Moore: England's legally minded Grand Slam hooker is still seeking justice for his fellow rugby union luminaries. Steve Bale reports

TWICKENHAM'S new East Stand is rising from the old as a reminder of where the money, power and influence lie in rugby union. It is a striking irony that Brian Moore, of all people, should have to walk past the ground every day on his way to Twickenham station and thence to work in town.

For it is Moore, the England hooker and even shop steward, who has been in the front line of the players' attempts to maximise their earning power under the game's liberalised amateur dispensation. Front line? Well, it has sometimes seemed like a war with his own administrators.

But not all of them by any means. The full majesty of the Rugby Football Union committee has voted twice by a two-thirds majority in favour of the Run With The Ball scheme which continues this season and last season may have made individuals something like pounds 3,000 apiece for 'non-rugby-related' activities (if there can ever be such a thing when a rugby player is involved) such as personal appearances, corporate days and the like. Hardly a fortune, is it?

Moreover, the scheme has had the official blessing of the International Rugby Board and as the commercial opportunities taken up by Australians and New Zealanders increase England cannot be insulated no matter how much those who are nostalgic for pure amateurism would wish. At the same time Moore, negotiator with the RFU and with the companies which supported Run With The Ball, would like to think otherwise but he knows that there are plenty of people at the heart of the union who would love to see him fall.

So for Moore the stroll past Twickenham, close to where he lives after being married in the summer, serves as useful and constant therapy. As the East Stand goes up, Moore knows he is right. 'It's quite salutary really, because every time I look at it I realise the magnificence and sheer size of the stadium. It brings on a churning feeling when I realise what we as international players have to do to get there and stay there.'

Which is why Moore, 30, has un- ashamedly led the way in establishing England, World Cup finalists and double Grand Slammers, as a worthwhile financial vehicle as well as highly successful team. But, he insists, we should not be deceived. 'People shouldn't get the wrong idea,' he said. 'If money were a motivation, the reason for playing, I would have given up a long time ago. But if players can make even five quid from sponsorship or endorsements of some kind, that's a principle established which is important.

'And we have to keep the pressure up because I'm well aware that the backwoodsmen will try to turn the clock back if they possibly can. There are clear IRB rulings which have accounted for a slight change in attitude at the RFU but the desire of some of the older members to go back is still as strong as it ever was. The problem is that they have far more longevity than we do and their performance is scrutinised a lot less than ours is.'

In other words Moore likes nothing more than playing, as he will be this afternoon when an England XV play Leicester to mark 100 years of rugby at Welford Road. But he is also ever ready, stridently so, to defend himself and his colleagues when their off-field activities are discussed - as they have been endlessly over the past 18 months or so. 'I can't stress enough that we need to get this in perspective: it's a very minor part of most players' thoughts.

'It certainly doesn't impinge on any playing or training or thoughts about the game for me or anyone else. I was at Simon Hodgkinson's wedding recently and all people were talking about was the new season. There was no talk about money at all. But although it's not something I think about much, I do have very definite views whenever I get on to the subject. Perhaps this explains my rather harsh image but it doesn't bother me; I seem to have a good laugh with my friends and actually get on with people quite well.'

Moore has a Lions tour, an unprecedented triple Grand Slam and the personal landmark of three more caps to take him past 42, John Pullin's record for an England hooker, as incentives for the season. He has missed only three England games since his debut in 1987 and is as much a fixture in Will Carling's team as any of the long servants who have also been there for years.

This permanence probably aggrieves Moore's opponents within the RFU committee who would be glad to be shot of him and a number of others - and they may be pleased to know that he intends his profile, off the field of course, to be lower than it has been. 'My time is severely limited now and I believe it's wise for things to develop so that other players take on the burden.'

Moore's time has been limited, like that of rugby players down the ages, by his job. A solicitor, he has returned to the law after a spell in merchant banking and, as he sardonically points out, in England the supposedly amateur game of rugby union is fundamentally dependent on employers. Elsewhere - Australia and New Zealand are always cited - it is diametrically different. 'In certain countries you have the advent of semi-pro players but we're a long way from it,' Moore said.

'England benefit from the generosity of employers and the commitment of players to work extremely hard, at work and on their rugby, under difficult circumstances - not all of which is appreciated. Professional commitments demand payment in the end and I have no doubt it will come. One day there will be a giant leap, and I see nothing wrong with that, but it won't happen in my time. In the end England will have no alternative but to ask themselves, do we or do we not compete on level terms?

'The Australians earn money with the full approval of their union; we have the full regulation of our union. The Australians have effectively said they don't care. Provided you don't get paid for actually playing the game, anything else is all right. We are still battling with the union when we should be working together.'

Moore's ire is exacerbated by the contrast between the expectations of others and the rewards they are prepared to grant. Here we come to the nub of the argument about the professionalisation of rugby union. It is partly to do with the extraordinary intensity of training regimes and partly with the pressure concomitant with being in the public eye. Moore's strictly amateur predecessors would not have understood let alone experienced life in a goldfish bowl.

'The Wallabies have just had six Tests in eight weeks,' he said. 'That's as professional a commitment as anything you could get and probably more than a soccer player's. The logic to me is inescapable. The inexorability of this argument is inescapable because you simply cannot expect this of people on a continuing basis without recognising that they have a legitimate claim for recompense for it.'

With the season at its outset, Moore states a trenchant case which will inevitably be discordant to RFU ears. 'On the one hand, you have people saying we impose far too much on our players, but at the same time they introduce home and away league fixtures which increase the burden. So they are saying one thing and doing the opposite.

'I don't find this surprising because I understand the need to build the stands at Twickenham and to sell the debentures to bring the money into the game so that it can develop. But it's neither fair nor honest to say we need you to play more so that we can get more income but, even so, your demands cannot possibly be met. In any case, if South Africa v Australia turns out to be a semi-pro game, so what?'

(Photograph omitted)