Can English Club Rugby Survive 2015?

The NZRFU were unhappy with the timings and commercial arrangements for RWC 2015. They wanted a bigger share of the money and the tournament to be held later in the year than was originally planned. This was to enable them to have a full (possibly even more bloated) Super Rugby season, and expanded 4Ns championship with about 9 matches per team and then WC warm-up matches in Europe. They persuaded their Sanzar partners to join them and threaten to withdraw.

The IRB have acceded to most of their wishes with the tournament due to start on September 16th with the final on October 31st AND the host nation** are not allowed to run their domestic season during this window. The knock on effect of a season not starting till November could be catastrophic for English clubs. Missing 9 weeks of the season will mean much lower incomes as either there will have to be a curtailed dometic season, or no entry into European competition. Gate receipts, TV revenues, Sponsorship will all fall and you can see clubs going bust.

PRL will push for compensation and will be accused of being parasitic, greedy bullies. All rather depressing.


** BTW for any Celtic neighbours pointing and laughing, the IRB are still considering whether they will sanction the Rabo during this period.

Excuse my ineloquence, but if that's the case then the NH needs to tell the IRB et al to f### off! For far too long the NH panders to the whim of the SH, but the money and interest is very much in the NH game. Our ruling RBs need to grow a pair and stop accepting everything that is said by the SH centric IRB.

Why would they sanction the rabbo?

Sponsors of the RWC do not want competing attractions. All pro tournaments have to have IRB sanction (ie agreement) to take place. While the host nation is England, tv coverage is freely available of the Rabo, so there is talk that the IRB may choose not to sanction the AP, Championship and Rabo (within the UK any way) - to ensure a "clean" competition.

Of course this is probably all just "positioning" to head of various compensation claims.

LondonTiger wrote:Sponsors of the RWC do not want competing attractions. All pro tournaments have to have IRB sanction (ie agreement) to take place. While the host nation is England, tv coverage is freely available of the Rabo, so there is talk that the IRB may choose not to sanction the AP, Championship and Rabo (within the UK any way) - to ensure a "clean" competition.

Of course this is probably all just "positioning" to head of various compensation claims.

England IS hosting the World Cup as 'England' I take it, and not the UK? England/UK always run into semantic difficulties when hostings of this nature take place.

The IRB is not a political body, it is a sporting body..and I'd assume its rules only allow it to make judgements based on the 'Nation' status of it's members. Wales and Scotland are distinct entities in this scenario - foreign territory in rugby terms. And I'm sure if the Welsh and Scottish wanted to push the issue they could force IRB to deal with TV rights and border issues strictly on the 'national' status of rugby sides. That is to say, if Top 14 can go ahead with their league, there is no legal grounds under which the IRB could force the Pro12 to cease operations.

English clubs will be bound by the conditions of their International Union who will be hosting the event and will want to please the sponsors but the French and Celtic sides don't need to play so softly. But having said all that, I wouldn't mind a lull in Pro12 during a WC. The leagues would be 'devalued' anyway given that they wouldn't have their 'star' players playing every week. Oops, the Irish Provinces already work on a 'devalued' model

From how I understand it is that the IRB is and will compensate Unions for financial losses, would this not be the same for the host nations in 2015?

There is good chance that Top14 will start later anyway so there is common ground amongst the european leagues to harmonise their calendars (would they wish so) and shift evrything by one month which would mean a lighter summer tour in 2016 (tis what FFR/LNR want anyway as they were quite annoyed by the delayed ko of the RWC 2015)

LondonTiger wrote:The NZRFU were unhappy with the timings and commercial arrangements for RWC 2015. They wanted a bigger share of the money and the tournament to be held later in the year than was originally planned. This was to enable them to have a full (possibly even more bloated) Super Rugby season, and expanded 4Ns championship with about 9 matches per team and then WC warm-up matches in Europe. They persuaded their Sanzar partners to join them and threaten to withdraw.

The IRB have acceded to most of their wishes with the tournament due to start on September 16th with the final on October 31st AND the host nation** are not allowed to run their domestic season during this window. The knock on effect of a season not starting till November could be catastrophic for English clubs. Missing 9 weeks of the season will mean much lower incomes as either there will have to be a curtailed dometic season, or no entry into European competition. Gate receipts, TV revenues, Sponsorship will all fall and you can see clubs going bust.

PRL will push for compensation and will be accused of being parasitic, greedy bullies. All rather depressing.


** BTW for any Celtic neighbours pointing and laughing, the IRB are still considering whether they will sanction the Rabo during this period.

"...and expanded 4Ns championship with about 9 matches per team and then WC warm-up matches in Europe ..."

A little exagerated there LT. Sanzar did ask for an end of September start in order to fit in the normal 4 Nations - the proposed early September start would have meant playing a half competition. If the IRB asked for the 6N to be cut to 3 rounds to fit in the RWC there'd be hell to pay up North, so you can't really blame the South for feeling the same way about their flagship competition

The finance question was separate, and funnily enough all of the Home unions voted in favour of Christmas the NZ proposal for more cash for tier 1 - NZ was simply the one to spoke what the rest were thinking.

Last year in NZ the INL Cup had to be abbreviated to get it finished pre RWC - and in 2007 the IRB forced it to be truncated rather than have a competition on on the other side of the world during the RWC - those rules are all down to the marketing people at the IRB

The RWC is already skewed unfairly in favour of the Southern Hemisphere teams, surely it is time the NH had some say in when it is staged?

The Great Aukster wrote:The RWC is already skewed unfairly in favour of the Southern Hemisphere teams

Yeah its pretty unfair that the best sides are always allowed to win

The Great Aukster wrote:The RWC is already skewed unfairly in favour of the Southern Hemisphere teams

Samoa begs to differ

The Great Aukster wrote:The RWC is already skewed unfairly in favour of the Southern Hemisphere teams, surely it is time the NH had some say in when it is staged?

They do

If the NH have some say in when the RWC is staged why don't they insist it is played in their season rather than when their players are match blunt?

Personally I'd prefer a domestic season to another snore fest like the last RWC. Until the tournament allows the tier 2 sides to have the same rest opportunities as the tier 1 sides we're not going to see much in the way of interest. All the top sides regularly play each other so we roughly know where we are at anyway.

the IRB has to look at extending the period over which to play the RWC, otherwise someone will keep on losing out on the fairness of scheduling, the alternative is to play less teams, if tey don't have a longer window in which to play the world cup.

The other altrnative is of course more teams, with 8 groups.

We have a tendancy in rugby circles to always look for a league format in every competition. Some of us are just addicted to the idea of Leagues!

We don't want our leagues tampered with by the great Satan The World Cup; but yet we want our respective countries to do well in said World Cup; but the World Cup isn't fair on the smaller sides, so maybe the World Cup should be extended in duration to allow lesser sides more recovery times, and if it's extended why don't we allow in more teams, why don't we make it a World Cup League with divisions and relegations and promotion stuff! Oh yeah, I'll have me some of that!

The conversation always gets back to leagues in the end.