England’s winners of the 2014 Women’s World Cup are facing a season without club rugby after the RFU passed an astonishing edict that will see them not be released to their clubs for the entire 2015/2016 season.

The game’s governing body has cited ‘player welfare’ in the build-up to the 2016 Olympics as their reason for retaining the players, but the plan to deny clubs access to the 20 centrally-contracted players has been met with fierce and unanimous criticism within the game.

Thurrock, who will be pushing for promotion to the Premiership this season, have four of England’s 2014 World Cup winners on their roster, but under the hastily-passed ruling will not be allowed access to Emily Scott, Rachel Burford, Kay Wilson or Heather Fisher.

Their Director of Rugby, Dean White, gave an outraged statement to The Rugby Paper: “The RFU have taken 20 players out of the Premiership and Championship and completely diluted the leagues. We’re planning a promotion challenge but they’ve ripped the guts out of us.

“The excuse being given by the RFU is it’s welfare-related and they’re having too much game time, but that’s a load of tosh. If anything, they’re not getting enough game time.

“There are rumblings about Premiership clubs pulling away from the RFU because they’re unhappy at the way they’re being treated. The World Cup legacy is being shot to pieces. There should be positive PR everywhere in women’s rugby after winning the World Cup but we’re just being steamrollered and it’s completely the opposite.

“We’ve had tremendous interest at Thurrock through the World Cup girls we’ve got playing for us and playing numbers are up, but if they’re not allowed to play that momentum will be lost. I’m angry and will be taking this all the way to Ian Ritchie.

“We’ve had this dumped on us and only found out last week, so how are we going to replace these players before the league starts in September?”

It seems baffling that a ruling that will have such a heavy effect on the women’s leagues has been passed so close to the start of the new season, and White is not the only coach who will be angry at the lack of time to make contingency plans.

What makes the edict more incomprehensible is the fact that only 12 players can be taken to the Olympics – and it is a Great Britain, not just England, squad, so players from Wales and Scotland will also make the cut. It means many of those 20 being retained by the RFU could face a whole season playing very little meaningful rugby in the next 12 months.

The RFU, arguing their corner, released the following statement to ScrumQueens: “Going into the new season, which is an Olympic year, we know that the season is going to be longer and even more intense.

“Also, the volume of training and level of playing intensity is very different in Sevens and XVs rugby which means we need to manage players’ workloads consistently and even more carefully throughout the season to maximise their potential as we strive for Olympic success on behalf of Team GB.”

The Sevens players face a strict and tough training regime, and are certainly worked hard, but the fear will be that clubs no longer want to produce home grown players for fear of them being pinched by England and not given back.

What do you think of the decision? Sensible player management, or completely over the top and unfair on the clubs?