The Italian rugby federation declared grandly on Friday that its clubs would be joining the Magners League, but it became clear over the weekend that their involvement in the Celtic competition is anything but a done deal. There are still innumerable hurdles to their participation and so far no details have emerged on how they will be overcome.

The Celtic unions, who have yet to receive formal notification of the application, are cautious about the idea, even though they were the ones who first proposed the idea and the Scots and Irish revived it three years ago when they were on the verge of throwing out the Welsh after an argument about the EDF Anglo-Welsh Cup. The unions feel that they are starting to establish the existing league as a genuine rival to the powerhouses in England and France and that stability is the key to taking the next step.

To succeed, the Italians need to prove that they can bring enough to the league to make it worth another season of disruption and yet another new structure to the tournament, which has been held back by the number of changes over its short history.

In the league’s eight seasons, this has been the first where there has been no change in the structure, the points system, or the number of teams from the season before. Next year, it is due to change again with the introduction end-of-season play-offs.

The Italians are earnest about their application, though. The announcement that they were to apply was linked with the formation of a committee to oversee the country’s application to host the 2015 World Cup, and they feel they must raise the quality of their game if they are to have any chance of winning that prize.

They have just been defeated in all three autumn internationals, including handing the Pacific Islands the only win of their European tour, and after spending the summer threatening to overtake Scotland in ninth place in the IRB world rankings, they have slipped back to eleventh, behind Fiji, with Samoa hot on their tails.

Nor is there much sign of hope in the club scene. Neither Treviso nor Calvisano, the two qualifiers from their Super 10 domestic competition, have made the slightest dent on this year’s Heineken Cup — neither has won a point and they have each conceded over 130 points more than they have scored.

The Italians have decided in principle that they want to join, but have two outline proposals on the table. It is not clear whether they intend to put both to the Celtic countries and offer them a choice or to spend time working out which is better for them. The first is to nominate the top four clubs from the domestic competition, with promotion and relegation between their Super 10 and the Magners League, assuming the league winner fulfils all the criteria necessary to take part in the cross-border competition.

The second idea is to create two “selections”, closer to the Scottish model where all the resources are thrown into a pair of teams that can be the feeder sides to the national team. As in Scotland, these sides would be centrally controlled, and would give the federation the chance to repatriate many of their international players. This model would be easier to sell to the Celtic countries, since it would cause less disruption, but as anybody in Scotland who lived through the clubs v districts bloodletting a decade ago could tell them, it will be harder to get agreement at home.

Even the two-team model has hurdles to overcome. For a start there is sponsorship. For the first five years, the Celtic League could not find a sponsor until Magners got involved in 2006. It is hard to see what Italy could offer the Irish cider company that would keep it interested. Then there is fixture congestion, particularly if the play-offs prove successful, and the cost of travel, plus other financial and commercial details.

There is a lot of work still to be done to turn the idea into a plan.