A tale of babies and bathwater?

Oh joy! Oh rapture! Oh wonder of wonders! Thank you, thank you, thank you RFU, I thought.

Why such effusions of pleasure and happiness? Because at last - at long last - it is dead. We have suffered, complained, banged out collective heads on desks, wept in frustration and despair but now - at last - at long, long last it is dead.

Yes - the RFU website. The worst, most out-of-date, most bl***dy awful website ever to be inflicted on the world by any major sport is no more. While the RFU were wasting time, money and heaven knows what is more on their launch of This is Rugby (see below) they also launched a New website!

That said there a few teeny, tiny snags. Like none of the old links work. Only a year ago the RFUW launched a special, easy-to-remember URL for women's rugby information - http://www.rfu.com/womens - with pencils and t-shirts and stuff and guess what? It doesn't work anymore. The new women's page is to be found at the slightly less snappy http://www.rfu.com/WomensRugbyPortal.aspx.

This does rather go against every guideline on the subject of web design that you would ever wish to think of. Which is a bit of a worry. This concern grows as you go deeper. Annoying though the old site was there was quite a lot of information on there, all be it well hidden most of the time and dreadfully badly laid out. Match reports, news, forms, team lists, and the invaluable and extremely useful "forum". Well, unless I am mistaken, its all gone!!! All of it. Well, 99.99% of it anyway.

Not only does a search for "Letchworth Girls" now reveal nothing (which some may suggest is a Good Thing!) but even the recent England match reports from the Nations Cup have gone. In fact all the old records have gone - in fact the amount of information on the site about women's and girls' rugby is now very small and even more hidden than in the past. Click on "England" and - unlike any other major rugby nation - you only get news about the men's team.

Perhaps its early days - perhaps the other information will be converted over the next few weeks. I really hope so. The old site was badly designed, but had loads of useful information on it. The new site seems well designed but seems to contain zilch of any value.

Out of the frying pan into the fire? Babies and bathwater?