More fans saw Leicester win rugby's Premiership on Saturday than had watched Manchester United clinch football's equivalent a few hours earlier.

What's more, the 82,000 at Twickenham witnessed a try and a result – the Tigers scraping through by a single point against London Irish – while the 75,000 at Old Trafford had to make do with a match that provided neither a winner nor a goal.

And yet rugby got it wrong. Leicester should not have been in the position where they needed to win at Twickenham to be crowned champions.

They had already won the league, like Manchester United establishing an unassailable lead at the end of their penultimate Premiership match.

But while the Reds were presented with a trophy at the end of their 0-0 draw with Arsenal, the Tigers had to win two more matches – a play-off semi-final against Bath and then the Twickenham final – before they could get their hands on the title they deserved.

Football rewards the team that plays with the greatest consistency throughout the season. That is the point of holding a league competition; each team plays its rivals on a home and away basis over the course of the campaign and the one with the best overall record – decided by an agreed points system – is declared the champions.

Rugby, however, only awards the title to the team that wins a tacked-on knockout competition.

Admittedly, entry to that competition is restricted to the teams that finished in the top four league positions, but the format is so flawed that ,before Leicester's triumph, only Sale had managed to win both the league and the play-offs.

All Wasps' titles had been achieved by beating a team that finished higher than them in the league. Indeed, in the 2002-3 season they had finished 15 points behind Gloucester at the end of the regular season, only to snatch the title from the Cherry and Whites at Twickenham.

Domestic football quite rightly steers clear of such absurdities.

Were the system in place this season, Manchester United's goalless draw against Arsenal at Old Trafford would only have guaranteed them another home match against the same opponents.

Another goalless draw – followed, for the sake of this hypothesis, by a penalty shoot-out which the Gunners edge – would see United surrender their title.

A similar result for Arsenal in the final – against the winners of the Liverpool-Chelsea play-off – would see Arsene Wenger's men crowned champions in front of both a team that finished at least 15 points clear of them in the league (United) and a team that won five more matches and lost four fewer than them (Liverpool).

Liverpool have in fact lost fewer matches than United, but they have also won fewer and, although Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez may claim that "if United have more points, it only means they have more points, that's all, nothing else" he is both disingenuous and wrong.

By having more points, United have therefore won the league and because they have won the league, deserve to be regarded as the best in England.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said in an international club context – at least not any more.

The European champions cup no longer does what it says on the tin. In the past, in order to win it, you had to first win your own domestic league and then prevail in a knockout competition against other domestic league winners in Europe.

Now you don't have to win your domestic league to get into the Champions' League and even if you do, there's no guarantee that you will get a place in the main draw, which leads to a league rather than a knockout competition.

The system is so heavily weighted to ensure that those clubs who have money get to make even more of it that the chances of an unfancied club reaching the last eight are minimised, and the chances of seeing four clubs from one country in the quarter-finals (as happened this year with United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea) are magnified.

As with rugby's Premiership play-offs, rampant commercialism has triumphed over integrity.

It may be too late to turn back the clock and get rid of the play-offs altogether, but it is not too late to acknowledge that they are a money-making and largely artificial exercise.

The team that does best over the course of a whole season deserves to be called champions. Leicester won two extra matches but they shouldn't have had to.

Like Manchester United, they are worthy champions.