Had the supreme entertainer been around today, he might well have considered changing his famous ditty to implore the modern-day Mrs Worthingtons not to put their daughters, and certainly not their sons, on the rugby field.

The game has become so dangerous that it is surprising clubs do not put up cigarette-style warnings around the pitch stating: Rugby can damage your health!

Indeed it can.

According to numerous surveys and medical reports causing such alarm among the rugby fraternity.

A major study of former Scottish international Rugby Union players found that they were more than twice as likely to get dementia and had a 15-fold increased risk of deadly motor neurone disease.

They were also three times more likely to get Parkinson's disease than anyone else.

Experts believe repeated knocks on the head are likely to blame rather than brain injuries and concussion, and that more research is urgently needed.

Fear of the demands of the modern game, since it became professionalised, could mean the problem is significantly worse than these initial findings show and have urged rugby chiefs, both Union and League, to reduce the number of games per season as well as calling for an immediate ban on contact training.

But it is not just the increasing threat of serious injury that bedevils rugby. Serious financial mismanagement and doping - rugby now heads the league table of drugs taking among British sport, and quite possibly the world.

Here in the UK, rugby reflects the sorry state of the nation: Everywhere you turn there is crisis.

It was another great wit, Oscar Wilde, who coined the phrase: "Rugby is a game for hooligans played by gentlemen." Now it seems the reverse is true.

Legend has it that the origins of rugby were at school in the 19th century when during a game of football, a boy picked up the ball and ran. 

Whatever be the story, rugby became as much the Beautiful Game as soccer, thrilling to watch and enjoyable to play.

Not anymore it seems.

It is not only the Mrs Worthingtons of this world who are fretting about allowing their offspring to pick up the ball and run.

A number of former rugby players of my acquaintance admit concern about the future of the game and the increasing violence seen even at the highest level.

Even Simon Halliday, an England World Cup hero who played 23 times for his country and is now an experienced administrator, has told The Mail on Sunday that he will not allow his kids to play the game because of its inherent dangers.

It is evident, according to statistics, that fewer youngsters are taking up the game which leads Halliday to suggest: "We need to go back to the future." 

He laments the consequences of rugby and the dramatically increased physicality. 

"Take the contact out of training. Forcibly stop high tackles. Players are scared for their future because they have had so many head injuries. 

"They don’t say anything because it’s their jobs. Let’s put some joy back into the game. I want all three of my little ones playing rugby but I will not have them knocked around because head impacts are part of the game."

It can be argued that rugby is now a more hazardous pursuit than boxing. These days you do not see former fighters walking on their heels and I cannot remember the last time I saw a cauliflower ear. 

But such things proliferate in rugby. Maybe this is because boxing referees are empowered to break up clinches and keep the combatants apart to avoid head clashes as much as possible whereas rugby referees want tightly packed scrums and close bodily contact.

I still wince when I recall my days as a reluctant lock forward at a rugby-playing grammar school. 

How some of the things that went on in the scrums were somewhat less than savoury.

English rugby is in chaos. It has been described by The Spectator as "nasty, dangerous, gladiatorial sport played by men with too much muscle and too little skill."

Rugby has other ills as well. 

As I have written here recently, barely a week passes without a press release from UK Anti-Doping dropping into my in-box with the information that one or more rugby players, either Union or League, has tested positive for an illegal substance.

I have long been amazed at the sights of players built like outhouses, with biceps bulging like Popeye and tree trunk legs rampaging on the rugby pitch. 

It leaves me wondering whether such bulk has been achieved by eating spinach and doing press-ups - or something more sinister. 

Rugby's fiscal woes have reached the critical stage. A succession of episodes on the finances has revealed that the sport, especially the Premiership has been living beyond its means.

This has led to Wasps, once one of the most successful and celebrated clubs in global rugby, being forced into administration, suspended and then relegated long with Worcester.

Several other clubs are said to be in danger of the same fate. Wage inflation now threatens the very survival of the Premiership.

All of which surely leads to this pertinent question. Is rugby, even in its sevens form, still a sport worthy of its place in the increasingly woke Olympic Games?