Deck now stacked too heavily against English clubs?

First topic message reminder :

This year has a been poor season for the English club sides in general. Not one side in the semi final of the Heineken cup, only one side in the quarter final and a league system that is continuing to divide opinion on it structure. It is now five years since an English side has won the Heineken Cup.

The Heinkeken Cup is called a club competition but if we are honest it is not really. The sides put forward by Ireland, Wales and Scotland are in effect large regions rather than individual clubs. Their league system and squad set up is designed to maximise success in the Heinekin Cup and Ireland in particular in recent years have exploited this very successfully.

The Rabo system is designed for Heineken Cup success, the Premiership and Top 14 are not. The regionalisation of the Celtic nations was designed to provide competitveness for those countries in a club competition that their own clubs would struggle to compete in without the regionalisation. English sides have to deal with issues of relegation and qualification for the Heinekin Cup that are not present in the Rabo.

Celtic nations players are consistently exposed to HC standard rugby each year as they do not have to qualify, whereas there is no guarantee for the Aviva and Top 14 players as it all depends on qualification. Therefore the same players are consistently exposed to HC levels regardless of what goes on
domestically.

Except at the business end of the season seldom do Leinster, Munster or even Edinburgh field full strength teams in the Rabo as they do in the Henieken Cup or the Rabo playoffs.

English sides also have to contend with the huge salaries being offered by their French counterparts.

These are just some of the issues I feel are now really challenging English Clubs. This is no slight on Leinster, as I have said they are the best domestic side in the Northern Hemisphere at the moment and have exploited the system offered to full advantage - also able to strengthen any weak areas with foreign imports where needed. But do England now need to look at changing their own system to contend with a club competition that is stacked against them? Thoughts welcome.

beshocked wrote:
I think ultimately we should ignore the advantages the Celtic League has. Focus on beating the likes of Clermont and Leinster.

If you do that, you probably won't have to worry about what Edinburgh or Treviso are doing.

The Edinburgh scenario is that they always qualify...the AP side would have to constantly play well in the actual HC itself to auto qualify. I think far too much emphasis on HC between the AP sides is based on performances in the AP. But the goal of Premiership is more than enough for Premiership.

The goal of HC should perhaps be judged on merit IN it. Afterall, the important bit for the English club's administrator is not that his clubs get into HC - six always do anyway, every year - six chances to win. It's doing well in it that's the main issue for him and them. And we tend to hear that the distractions of League stops English sides doing well. Well, make the distraction a big enough carrot to interest the clubs.

Right now, the story is the clubs don't value the HC enough to actually want to perform in it, even though the qualification process to get into it is always marked down as one of the reasons they can't perform in it. Catch 22 that needs some creative thinking to bypass.

Feckless Rogue wrote:

beshocked wrote:
I think ultimately we should ignore the advantages the Celtic League has. Focus on beating the likes of Clermont and Leinster.

If you do that, you probably won't have to worry about what Edinburgh or Treviso are doing.

Treviso are rubbish

Brendan wrote:Just a few things.

Ireland when for the four provinces not to match the English and French but to be financailly viable (as far as I know)
Wales and Scotland and now italy followed as they could not last financial with their 12 team league. England and France may even end up adding another two teams as they need to raise more money.

Ireland were rubbish because they could hold onto the top players as they left. Munster and now all the provinces are only letting their 2nd string players leave which has resulted in thier rise and England's fall as they get less quaility irish players.
England now loose some of their top players and if they kept them would be better. Scotland are improving as they are bring some players back while wales will fall as they loose their top players.

Cycles - Ireland are top of the cycle, Scotland, Italy and England are on the up while wales and France (losing top players to Japan) on the way down.

Also Ireland don't have many professional players outside of the 4 squads unlike most other countries so if we have bad squads we cand replace them with anyone ala connacht

Genuine question; is the 40%, 10 year tax break that is now available in Ireland, very useful in persuading younger players from moving abroad?

Cardiff Dave wrote:

Brendan wrote:Just a few things.

Ireland when for the four provinces not to match the English and French but to be financailly viable (as far as I know)
Wales and Scotland and now italy followed as they could not last financial with their 12 team league. England and France may even end up adding another two teams as they need to raise more money.

Ireland were rubbish because they could hold onto the top players as they left. Munster and now all the provinces are only letting their 2nd string players leave which has resulted in thier rise and England's fall as they get less quaility irish players.
England now loose some of their top players and if they kept them would be better. Scotland are improving as they are bring some players back while wales will fall as they loose their top players.

Cycles - Ireland are top of the cycle, Scotland, Italy and England are on the up while wales and France (losing top players to Japan) on the way down.

Also Ireland don't have many professional players outside of the 4 squads unlike most other countries so if we have bad squads we cand replace them with anyone ala connacht

Genuine question; is the 40%, 10 year tax break that is now available in Ireland, very useful in persuading younger players from moving abroad?

If the EU have their way, Ireland won't have this incentive anymore. Irishmen vote yes!

I'd say so Cardiff. It's a financial incentive to stay isn't it? If

1. You're Irish
2. You finish your career in Ireland

You're entitled to some tax back on the last 10 years of your employment here.

Obviously all Irish players are fully aware of this when they're weighing up their futures.

Every Irish players tends to try and make it at his province, and will only move abroad when getting into the team seems very unlikely or if the province won't renew the contract.

If the EU have their way

.......................it'll be George Orwell in a grey room handing out statistically accurate results to rugby teams that don't need to play but just run their genetic code through the Euro Drone machines and wait to see if they won the HC

As, going back to your point about P-shares, well it's because the lower 2/3 of the premiership control it. These are the ones who want to limit the top teams and are most likely to be relegated.

Fly, regarding your idea for HEC places being linked to the HEC success. What would be the point of that? To allow teams to focus on the HEC rather than the premiership right? But that's not what fans want. Also the lower clubs that control the league like the fact that the top teams are trying to compete on two fronts. Add in the fact the most likely end point is the top teams being the ones that qualify for the quarter finals and these aren't the ones fighting for qualification.

What really needs to happen is for the clubs to accept they don't want to optimize the English system for European or International success. I'm contented with that and am happy when one of the clubs do well. I think the system is good enough to get the best teams a chance in Europe and to supply the international side with decent players. Whilst maintaining a popular league system. That's whatl I want from it.

HammerofThunor wrote:As, going back to your point about P-shares, well it's because the lower 2/3 of the premiership control it. These are the ones who want to limit the top teams and are most likely to be relegated.

Fly, regarding your idea for HEC places being linked to the HEC success. What would be the point of that? To allow teams to focus on the HEC rather than the premiership right? But that's not what fans want. Also the lower clubs that control the league like the fact that the top teams are trying to compete on two fronts. Add in the fact the most likely end point is the top teams being the ones that qualify for the quarter finals and these aren't the ones fighting for qualification.

What really needs to happen is for the clubs to accept they don't want to optimize the English system for European or International success. I'm contented with that and am happy when one of the clubs do well. I think the system is good enough to get the best teams a chance in Europe and to supply the international side with decent players. Whilst maintaining a popular league system. That's whatl I want from it.

I don't want to change the English league at all...I'm afraid I watch very little of it.

But I am responding to the many ideas over the years and months that the HC jaunt is 'unfair' on English clubs - especially their qualification process.

Now I'm hearing you tell me that not only is it really the English club's business (heard it before and it's correct) it is also something they like, something the smaller clubs want to see continue and easing the burden of the qualification process would only play into the hands of teams that....well, in all seriousness, are about the only ones that would stand a chance of winning it!!!! Bizarre stuff looking from the outside, given the mileage of chitchat about this topic over the months.

So the English clubs and League like what they have, don't want it changed, don't really want to see the fortunes of the clubs boosted in the HC itself (at the expense of sides that wouldn't really win it anyway) and....................................... well, all is right with the world. ..................................


.................Except it isn't. There is of course the Pro12, who like what they have and consider it their business, but English premiership doesn't_____ mostly because they Pro12 have "unfair" advantages that help them go further in a competition that's called Heineken Cup.



! What's that thing Patrick McGoohan starred in in the 60s? The Prisoner.

Perhaps you're wrongly thinking that 'English rugby' is one entity. It's not. It's made up of the top club fans, bottom club fans, international fans, general fans, the players, the top clubs, the bottom clubs, the championship clubs, etc

All want different things from domestic rugby and European rugby. The majority of the clubs (>75%) are happy with the English structure. The ones who aren't are the top clubs like Leicester and the new boys like Exeter. Who is it who usually complains about the structure? Leicester and Saints. The others are much rarer, usually to try and excuse a loss. If the PRL thinks it's got the muscle to force changes on the other members of the ERC they'll try that before going do the route of changing the English system.

It's a sucky system but it's the one we're stuck with for the time being.

HammerofThunor wrote:Perhaps you're wrongly thinking that 'English rugby' is one entity. It's not. It's made up of the top club fans, bottom club fans, international fans, general fans, the players, the top clubs, the bottom clubs, the championship clubs, etc

All want different things from domestic rugby and European rugby. The majority of the clubs (>75%) are happy with the English structure. The ones who aren't are the top clubs like Leicester and the new boys like Exeter. Who is it who usually complains about the structure? Leicester and Saints. The others are much rarer, usually to try and excuse a loss. If the PRL thinks it's got the muscle to force changes on the other members of the ERC they'll try that before going do the route of changing the English system.

It's a sucky system but it's the one we're stuck with for the time being.

I'm genuinely thankful for that Thunor...that really is the first time I've heard any explanation of the Pro12 v AP HC conundrum explained to me and it actually for the first time made complete sense. I wonder why it never showed its face before in all my time reading these threads.

So the smarting about HC qualification is from the big sides in AP and it isn't shared by the lower ranked sides. So in a sense it's very much an internal battle within the AP and the Pro12 have just somehow been dragged into it? Makes sense now...it really didn't before.

The whole situation was made worse with the EPS smoothing payments. The vast majority of the EPS squad is made up of Saints, Tigers, Sarries and Quins. But these clubs are compensated for the same amount as the other sides (for ~2 players per club). So Tigers not only have to find a squad that can compete on two fronts, they effectively have a smaller budget that the lower teams because they're losing players and can't build their squad to compensate. Add in to this the ease of movement of their talented young players to another squad because they can be 1st choice somewhere else means it's pricey to keep players (I know Tigers fans are fretting about Ford's contract running out next year).

The system will be better next year. The marque signing thing will take out around £300,000 (at a guess) for most sides and some of this can be used for squad depth. Also extra cap room is available for academy products, which will enable them to retain players better.

We'll have to see what happens.

Thunor, do you know what the EPS payments have been in the last few seasons?

Not exactly. The payment is £4.2M per year. If we assume that the split of this is down to the 32 EPS players it works out as £350k per player. But it includes Saxons, U20 and general funding to the clubs. Even if it's £100k per player that means Tigers are missing out on around £500k per year (but they wouldn't be able to spend it on players as they're at the limit anyway.