Salvation may be at hand for London Irish. In what would constitute a remarkable shifting of the goalposts in mid-stream, further steps toward the removal of relegation from the Allied Dunbar Premiership at the end of this season may be taken this evening when the various club owners of the 12 Premiership clubs come together to discuss matters of mutual and often vexed issues.

Ostensibly, nothing will be formally ratified at tonight's meeting, one of several `working parties' which are taking place before a key meeting of the clubs' umbrella body, English Rugby Partnership, later this month. But one of the proposals gathering momentum is for an increase in Premiership One from 12 to 14 clubs.

This would undoubtedly carry much favour with the clubs in the lower half of the table, not to mention those pushing for promotion from the top of the so-called Premiership Two, while even those in the higher echelons of Premiership One would not be greatly perturbed by it.

How this might be achieved is another matter, but it would almost certainly mean at least a narrowing of the relegation trapdoor. Currently, the bottom two clubs would be relegated with the ninth and 10th placed clubs obliged to compete in relegation/promotion two-legged play-offs.

"No one knows yet how they would go about expanding the Premiership to 14 clubs, it could be two up with a play-off between the third-placed club in Premiership two and the bottom-placed club in Premiership One," said London Irish coach Willie Anderson. There is also a feeling that the top flight could well accommodate a 26-match league campaign. To further facilitate that aim, there is also likely to be much sabre-rattling from tonight's meeting and the next ERP meeting. Indeed, there is a growing fear that the elite clubs might press for a five-year block on relegation and so create a closed shop.

"But it's such a money spinner that when push comes to shove it would be unlikely to come to that," said one insider. "Their main complaint is that the European Cup starts far too early, coming as it does at the beginning of September."

There are also those arguing for a withdrawal from the Heineken European Cup and the European Conference, to be replaced by an Anglo-French Cup, which again could be interpreted as more sabre-rattling from the money men who would like to all but extinguish the participation of the Irish, Scots, Italians and, if needs be, Welsh from the Euro competitions.

Another demand from ERP will be that the home unions synchronise their autumn international friendlies over just two nominated Saturdays, a well nigh impossible task given the logistics of touring sides, especially from the southern hemisphere, not to mention the demands of television for a greater spread of international games.

Showing a suitably dismissive understanding of the game's traditions, the nouveau riche are also set to press for the Five Nations Championship to be run off at the end of the season, in April, over five successive weeks.