Top-flight domestic rugby returns this weekend with the Prem Rugby Cup — the former Anglo-Welsh, British and Irish, and inter-Prem/Championship competition that has become something of a nothing league. But that is a discussion for another day.

The return of rugby in England feels underhyped. There has been an entire summer of international rugby in the southern hemisphere — still ongoing with South Africa's series against New Zealand — yet in the northern hemisphere it has been extremely quiet.

So how could noise be generated from Prem Rugby's headquarters in Victoria? By introducing a draft system. It would create buzz at the height of the summer and give fans something to look forward to between the end of one season and the start of the next. Rugby union has almost no tradition of drafts — they are familiar mainly from American sport and cricket's Hundred — so a Premiership version would be a genuine novelty for the English game.

But it should not be modelled on The Hundred, where the very best players are up for grabs, nor on the US system, where mega-deals are done for youngsters competing at a youth level that rugby could not even fathom.

A personal lesson in the pathway problem

I completely messed up my A-Levels and, long story short, had to leave a Harlequins academy set-up to attend Durham University — which saw something in my rugby despite my grades — to ensure I had a back-up plan should my career be cut short.

There will be hundreds of young rugby players who find themselves in the same or similar positions. A draft for graduating university players — perhaps not quite good enough to announce themselves on the scene like Henry Pollock did at 18 — to get back into the top flight of the game could be the solution.

Current pathway rules give each of the main clubs a catchment area for talent, but that ends if players go to university and are not signed up at a club with a link to the Premiership — such as Bedford Blues and Northampton Saints, or Hartpury College and Gloucester. The issue carries extra weight given the professional game's financial instability in recent years — with clubs such as Worcester Warriors, Wasps and London Irish exiting the Premiership — which has made robust back-up plans and second pathways more important than ever for young players.

Is a draft daft?

A draft for graduates would allow those who go to university to invest in their education, contribute to the deeply impressive Bucs university programme — which has produced countless rugby stars including Alun Wyn Jones (Swansea) and Alex Dombrandt (Cardiff Metropolitan) — and still have a shot at a full career later down the line. Dombrandt's route from Cardiff Metropolitan to Harlequins and England is the clearest proof that university rugby can already produce top-flight talent when clubs take notice.

The mechanics would be simple: the bottom-placed side from the previous Premiership season gets the first pick, and the sequence works its way up the table. That principle — worst teams picking first — is borrowed directly from the NFL draft, which has used the format since 1936 to spread incoming talent across its league. These would be players hungry to return to top-flight sport, and picks for whom clubs have had to scout and find space.

The reality is that the Championship feels ostracised, and unless there is better cooperation between that league and the one above it, it is hard to see how players get scouted en masse and tested at the highest level.

A draft in rugby union — and in the Premiership specifically — would be a welcome development, but it should be one that taps into a part of the rugby landscape that is not already diluted. University students are exactly that, and the game should find a way of ensuring talent is not lost through ignorance or lack of trying.

Former England Sevens captain Ollie Phillips is the founder of Optimist Performance. Follow Ollie @OlliePhillips11