As my powers of prophecy are right up there with my gifts as a scholar of old Germanic literature and my talents as a tuba player, it's not exactly surprising that nobody bothered to ask me for my predictions before the European rugby season got under way a couple of weeks ago.

Had they done so, however, I would have stated with firm and unshakeable conviction that the prospect of Scotland being the only nation with a 100 per cent record after two weekends of action was about as likely as the SRU introducing meet-and-greet valet parking for visiting media during this year's autumn Test programme.

Just shows what I know.

In the Champions Cup, Glasgow swatted Bath aside with almost contemptuous ease, before chiselling out a second win on the trot in Montpellier a few days ago. Edinburgh, meanwhile, opened their Challenge Cup account with a startling 15-13 away win over Bordeaux-Begles, then backed it up as they completed a French double by beating Lyon at their BT Murrayfield home.

All very uplifting for us, but all very embarrassing for those in English rugby circles - not all of them called Jeremy Guscott - who had been punting the toe-curlingly ill-informed opinion that the Scottish sides would be the whipping boys and the easybeats of the newly revamped European competitions.

From where I'm standing, comfortably to the north of Hadrian's Wall, it seems that most of the whippings thus far have been suffered by our friends in the south.

In the 20 Champions Cup matches played so far, eight have been won by Guinness PRO12 sides, seven by teams from France's Top 14 and a mere five by English outfits. The numbers are more damning still when you look only at direct clashes between PRO12 and Aviva Premiership sides. Seven have taken place; in five of them it was the team from the Celtic/Italian competition that came out on top.

But wait. Isn't this the sort of thing that the recent redrawing of the European rugby map was meant to prevent? Didn't the English clubs dig their heels in to demand - and get - a different kind of competition, one that suited their needs better? Wasn't it all about levelling the playing field so that England's sides got a fair crack of the whip?

Well, yes, on all fronts. And more, because the argument was that England's teams could not compete against the PRO12 sides because they were also involved in the cut-throat competition of the Aviva Premiership. A PRO12 team could afford to rest players ahead of European ties, a luxury that English sides did not enjoy. It was all so wicked and horrid and unfair.

Yet now that those inequalities have been removed, the inconvenient truth for most of the English teams is that they are just as rubbish as before. With two rounds gone, Wasps, Bath and Sale Sharks already look dead in the European water, without a single win between them.

And their troubles and travails demand a re-evaluation of their arguments for restructuring Europe in the first place.

You see, the narrative put forward by Premier Rugby Limited (PRL), the English clubs' umbrella organisation, was that they could ill afford to throw resources at Europe when their domestic competition was such a close-fought affair.

PRL put out the line that English rugby was ruthlessly meritocratic, an environment in which simply staying in the top league had to be the priority and European concerns took second place. The theory had some merit, but on closer inspection it was actually total cobblers.

Because when you scrape away at the surface and look at the reality of the situation, the top flight of English rugby is very far indeed from being a dog-eat-dog competition. Quite the opposite, in fact. For all the talk of the Premiership as a sink-or-swim tournament, most of its sides have been floating along rather nicely for many years. Of the 12 teams there now, 10 were also in it a decade ago.

That self-serving, self-perpetuating, closed-shop dimension is even more apparent in Europe. Look back to the 2000/01 Heineken Cup line-up and you will find that five of the six English teams who took part then are in the Champions Cup now. And it gets even more alarming when you make comparisons with France.

In the past 10 seasons, Exeter have been alone among English sides in having made the breakthrough into the top flight in Europe; during the same period, seven French teams have risen to that level.

There is a powerful irony in all this. In making the argument for a new European settlement, PRL claimed that PRO12 sides occupied a comfort zone because they did not have to worry about relegation.

In actual fact, English sides have been almost as well insulated from that dread prospect in recent years. In each of the past few seasons, one hapless club has become isolated at the bottom of the table, destined for the drop almost from the off. With only one side going down, the other 11 in the division have had nothing of much substance to worry about.

Yet, you will still hear the weary argument that English rugby is dull because the spectre of relegation obliges sides to play conservatively. It is complete nonsense. Already, after just six games, it is clear that London Welsh will go down at the end of this season, just as it was blindingly obvious that Worcester Warriors were heading for the exit door for almost the whole of last season. With those fall guys conveniently in place, all the other teams in the league could afford to play as adventurous a brand

of rugby as they wanted.

But still they didn't. For the most part, the English style was obstinately slow-paced, low-risk and forward-orientated. To an extent, I can actually respect that, for English sides have a noble, and often rather successful, tradition of playing rugby along those lines, but it has been a matter of choice.

To blame others is disingenuous.

In any case, the most relevant point of comparison for English sides is across the channel in France's Top 14. Despite a far more competitive environment, where two sides are relegated each year, French teams typically play a brand of rugby that is far more compelling to watch and, on current evidence, markedly more successful to watch.

On Sunday, it was my privilege to be in Clermont Auvergne's Stade Marcel Michelin as the home side demolished a moribund Sale team 35-3. The gulf in class was almost embarrassing to see.