Proposals for an Ireland/Scotland/Wales/England league...

First topic message reminder :

...to sit above the Celtic/Rabo and the Jeff (presumably).

Does anyone know if such plans are still being mooted? After extensive online research, the last links I can find are to (apparently sensible) suggestions made by Peter Tom, Leicester fella, in 2011.

Pretty fundamentally if Scotland, Italy, Ireland and Wales don't have guaranteed places in the competition then why should we vote for it. It's a two-speed competition. France and England are allowed six guaranteed entrants minimum and no-one else is allowed one guaranteed entrant? From the same masterminds that gave us England (one nation) taking a third of the places and money, France (one nation) taking a third of the places and money and the other four nations splitting the last third between them. And they call it rebalancing!

Stop saying Pro12 teams like we're one union. We have nothing to do with each other outside the Pro12. I don't care how the Welsh. Scottish or Italians sort out how they enter teams to the Heineken Cup so long as we have the right to determine how we decide which Irish teams qualify. How can a deal where two unions already supply 50% of the teams to a six union competition be called unbalanced against those two unions?

What a cave in by the SRU that would be Asbo.

Disgusting, Notch, but not unexpected

"Why should we vote for it" Money pure and simple. If something like that goes through it's because the Unions agreed to it for the money.

Sorry but what I read from that article was that the absolute minimum the SRU would accept would be 1 guaranteed spot plus another possible based on performance. And they would not lose money if only one team got into the HEC. That's not even what they agreed to but there bare minimum. Or did I miss something.

AsLongAsBut100ofUs wrote:Interestingly if this Hootsmon article is true (and bear in mind that their normal source is the the spoof daily Porridge), then it would seem that the SRU blazeratti have already completely caved in along the lines that you would like, Poorfour!!

http://m.scotsman.com/sport/rugby/latest/dodson-stands-firm-on-5m-heineken-cup-pot-for-sru-1-2969914

Interesting. I'd never heard this.

Dodson wrote:There has been much talk of making the Celtic nations qualify through the RaboDirect PRO12, with the top six or eight automatically going into a slimmed-down 20-team tournament, and the rest dropping into the second-tier Amlin Challenge Cup. Dodson insisted that he was confident, despite Edinburgh finishing this season in tenth spot, that both Scottish teams would qualify automatically. If they did not, he said he would have no problem with the side that did not dropping into the Challenge Cup, but only if there was no change to the £5m that the SRU received annually from ERC for competing.

Dodson, speaking from a position of complete weakness says that he'd accept one team in the EC and one in the CC for the same money as having both in the EC.

Is he attending the Alex Salmond School of Effective Persuasion?
It seems to me that Scottish rugby has been in decline since professionalism for some very good reasons like elitism and its inability to grasp the key fact that it has located both of its franchises in football hotbeds whilst its One True Region is in the sparsely populated but pro-rugby Borders. Of course the odd HEC game may have had to be reassigned to a footy ground but its Rabo games might have been better rotated though the senior club grounds. If indeed it was the correct decision in the first place to follow the franchise route

Different topic, PC, lets not get into that here - happy to debate on another thread of course

Only it's not, As. The entire Rabo argument is based on the premise that two or three Irish sides have gained European success and two entire nations' outfits have essentially freeloaded on their success. Wales meanwhile have developed nationally as a team but their regions have failed to inspire the public to put their bums on seats. Why's that? I think that the WRU in a period of extreme drought took a course which entirely was at odds with its traditional club-based ethos.

Llanelli, Swansea, Ebbw Vale, Cardiff, Newport etc. are brands which I feel still have relevance.

Thank feic England didn't (have to) go down that route.

Hold on. The English and French get 48% of the revenue from the hc, and the other FOUR unions have to share 52%!!!

And they want MORE!!!

HOW DE FOCK IS THAT FAIR?

This is a really interesting thread, which reminds me very much of the demise of the old Home Internationals in Wendyball. The English FA used pretty much the same arguments as English RFU are hiding behind at the moment. But the core truth was that the English believed that the Welsh and Northern Irish FA's were being subsidized by the annual fixture and that England's chances of winning the world cup were being diminished by playing "lesser" nations when they could be improving by playing top notch opposition. The Scottish FA went along with this, seeing loadsa money playing England and Brazil or Argentina every year and Wales and Northern Ireland were told to fend for themselves. The Rouse Cup, as it was known, became an embarrassment as any South American side good enough to be money spinning box office was de facto too good for Scotland or England. Defeat followed defeat until the tournament organisers were reduced to inviting Columbia in the hope of a home win and they still stuffed us. That was the end.
The long term result was the impoverishment of the Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish FA's, reflected in a dizzying slide down the world rankings for all three. England have still not won the world cup and are slightly lower in the world rankings than they were 30 years ago.
Oh yes and football's answer to the Six Nations is now just a distant memory.
The Rabo nations do not have the population/market share to support a professional game without the TV money that HC brings. If England and France get too greedy then we will lose the Six Nations and all six nations will be so much the poorer for that.

What exactly have the RFU said on this matter?

Portnoy's Complaint wrote:Only it's not, As. The entire Rabo argument is based on the premise that two or three Irish sides have gained European success and two entire nations' outfits have essentially freeloaded on their success. Wales meanwhile have developed nationally as a team but their regions have failed to inspire the public to put their bums on seats. Why's that? I think that the WRU in a period of extreme drought took a course which entirely was at odds with its traditional club-based ethos.

Llanelli, Swansea, Ebbw Vale, Cardiff, Newport etc. are brands which I feel still have relevance.

Thank feic England didn't (have to) go down that route.

I'm not sure that I understand this point with respect to a future European x-union club competition? The fact that Ireland's provinces have been successful doesn't mean that the Scots districts and Welsh regions have 'freeloaded' on anything? The entire Rabo argument for keeping as close to the status quo as possible has nothing to do with the success of the Irish provinces - that's ancient history. It's about the future, it's about ensuring healthy competitive rugby in the NH

Well said Asbo

My charge is that the Scots and Italians have essentially freeloaded. The Welsh found themselves in a dark place and sold out after much well-publicised hand wringing.

As wrote: It's about the future, it's about ensuring healthy competitive rugby in the NH

Which is why they want glass ceilings and closed contests. Doesn't sound very 'competitive' does it?.

p.s. NO tabled proposal has my personal support.

Portnoy's Complaint wrote:My charge is that the Scots and Italians have essentially freeloaded. The Welsh found themselves in a dark place and sold out after much well-publicised hand wringing.

As wrote: It's about the future, it's about ensuring healthy competitive rugby in the NH

Which is why they want glass ceiling and closed contests. Doesn't sound very 'competitive' does it?

no it comes down to the number of teams available. perhaps in the future the Italians and scots may introduce a few more teams and then the rabo may have the opportunity to have an open contest.

i always get the impression from you that the future of healthy competitive rugby will always come second to Leicester and the Jeff.

Then you haven't read any of my posts criticising The Tigers, the PRL or the RFU, GiTS.

yes i have

This has been the most constructive debate on the topic I've yet seen, so let's keep it that way.

For centuries, physicists debated whether light was a particle or a wave. One of the great breakthroughs of modern physics was the realisation that it's both. You can look at it in ways that highlight one or other aspect, but at a fundamental level a photon is both a particle and a wave.

I think the key is for us to accept that the same is true of the ERC. It is both a union and a club competition. As long as it is contested by club/provincial/regional sides from different countries, that will always be true. I would argue that that means there has to be a balance of union and club interests. The unions are looking to get the benefits of promoting rugby in the NH, but it's the clubs that bear most of the cost of the competition, and who play the games.

Any solution does need to support rugby in the weaker unions. But it also must not ride roughshod over the interests of the clubs, both as a point of principle (it's sport. The commercial and competitive environment should be as fair as possible) and practicality (if it's not a reasonably level playing field, the clubs will refuse to participate).

So any solution needs to look at both the club and union aspects of the situation. For instance, the AP and LNR have more teams in the competition because they have more viable teams overall. If there were 12 viable teams in each union, we could imagine a competition in which each supplied 4 to the top tier comp. But we don't. At the same time, it's appropriate that each union is represented in the competition. But at the moment the situation where 4 unions get between 75% and 100% of their viable teams into the competition and the other 2 get 50% or fewer is too skewed to the unions side and ultimately bad for rugby because it downplays the value of the second tier competition and leaves weaker teams in the top tier competition year after year. So we need a model that addresses that.

Similarly with the money. Two of the unions get half the money - but they supply half the competitors and (more importantly at this stage of the game's development) over 2/3 of the potential competitors. 1/3 of the teams get half the money. I am not sure there is an answer that looks fair from all angles. But I am sure that the only way to find an answer is to recognise that both perspectives have validity and need to be accommodated. Compromise on both sides is required, but the status quo currently favours the union view on every count.

The most likely way out of this is not increasingly acrimonious debates about how to cut up the pie. It's to find a bigger pie. ERC has demonstrably not done the best job it can of making the most of the commercial opportunities in the contest - the BT deal shows that.

I find this argument very interesting, and I confess that I do not know the in's and out's of the subject surrounding the hc negotiations to any degree a lot of you in here do, but from what i've read and see is'nt the negotiations heading down this route?

England and France want more money, more clubs involved and to essentially treat the Rabo as an equal third european league to their own domestic leagues. This alienates and angers the 4 nations involved in the Rabo, who all hold equal shares in the ERC that runs the contest.

Wales, Ireland, Scotland and Italy hold much more equity in the ERC and outweigh England and France and want that recognised, each union wants it's equal share recognised and treated as such individually.

The ERC wants to publicise it's key goals are to aid competitiveness, but are really fighting for it's very excistence by trying to appease England and France?


It seems to me, that the actual beneficial elements of these arguments are the exact opposite of what everyone wants;

England and France want to grow their financial capacity, league dominance, and want to win in the hc regularly. This however will lead to a Top 14 style attraction of top foreign talent, more money, and success but wasted on mercenaries overpaid and overhyped. Look at Racing Metro, Lydiate, Sexton and Roberts are the tip of the ice berg, the 10 dillema for France is well documented and this compounds the problem at 12 and 6 too! Does the PRL really want to follow that route?

The 'celtic' unions want to be treated as big players, yet they do not have the resources to act as such regularly enough on the world stage, they need to bond and use each others abilities to stay competitive, non have the ability to run a pro league.

The NH junior development pathways are all built around the same model, hence they develop very similar traits in players, difference being England and France have far more numbers to choose from, hence have more competition and can stay competitive much more regularly, whereas Wales Ireland and Scotland can have peaks and troughs. Why do England and France want to over pay, play and develop these players for the 'celtic' nations when their biggest weaknesses are pro slots for those players to get exposure? The French national team and junior teams are being effected already and the Welsh junior system is as good as it's ever been, an era of Welsh national team success has been born from a very poor junior system, what will be of a junior system competitive with any others, then more and more of those players getting pro rugby exposure because of the greed of others?

The 6N is and will be the top rugby tournament on the planet, but it will come to a point where this tournament will be in danger because of the desperation of all involved, the English and French are trying to dominate club rugby, and will be succesfull, therefore the rest of the 6N teams will use whatever levergae they could possibly have to aid their survival, I can see Ireland Scotland and Wales looking for an international solution to a growing club problem.

Hello gentlemen,

This is my very first post. I'm french and discovered this rugby forum recently. So I registered, thinking a french insight was lacking in your (mostly interesting and relevant) debates. So here am I.

Let me tell you a couple of things:
First of all, the french clubs are NOT in an alliance with the english to reform the Hcup, this is crap. That's what the English side wants you to believe, so that they play their hand appearing stronger than they really are. Some of their interests are common but that's all. And the will of the English to install a sort of parity between Top14 and AP at the top of the Hcup is ridiculous, they are trying to have a free lunch at the expense of the celts. We don't want that. What the french clubs want is a reform of the format of the Hcup (specially the first part), that they consider detrimental to them. The thing is that the Top 14 is really, really hard, the teams battle fiercely in it and when they play the euro competition, they are drained and exhausted, particularly in front of Rabo teams which, on the contrary, manage their teams (ie, don't care about Rabo)to arrive at peak form for the Hcup. Now, accusing the Rabo of being "too weak" (like the English have) is ridiculous, it is what it is that's all. the problem is the format (and the calendar) the french want to change, to allow them to properly manage their teams (with rest periods and peak objectives).
Also, I have to say (and this was said here before), the french are a little angry when they see the irish sides, who performed very well in the competition, beat them by actually targeting specifically the Hcup. Of course, they do, that's where they get the money from. And where is it from exactly?? well, from the profoundly unequal share they get from TV rights (50%), as opposed to 20 for the french. In other words, the french are transferring money to the Rabo to feed competitors who beat them. Uhhh...they are not happy with the irish having it both ways, you understand?
But again, for the french it's the shape of the competition that counts, not the money. They are OK with some form of redistribution to make it interesting (since the rabo doesn't generate the money to feed your teams) but on one condition: that they have a fair chance at winning it (a more balanced calendar).

I have a lot of other things to say, so i'll be back one of these days.

Welcome to the forum, desi - great to have another Gallic view - one of your compatriots 'whocares' also posts from time to time

Welcome desi, it's always good to get the opinion of someone from outside the UK/Ireland. Especially from a key player in European rugby. Shame there aren't many Italians (I think there is a poster who pops up occationally).

One thing you need to be careful with is semantics. You say the the English are ridiculous to say the Rabo is "too weak" and go on to say the problem is they don't care about the league and rest players. Those are the exact complaints that some English commentors have, but those get twisted into "weak". Some owners have said the current financial distribution isn't fair but there is nothing (that I have seen) in the proposals to define how the money would be split up. Again at the end of your post you state the exact same issue, i.e. French funding the Ireland to beat them.

Basically, all your 'complaints' are exactly the same as thoses brought out by the English. And although there certainly isn't any sort of Franglo alliance the general changes they want lie in similar directions.

As far as I was aware one of the main triggers for this was that the FFR took the LNR votes in the ERC to ensure Lux got voted in. One of the key issues here (and it's the one that goes around and around) is that the English clubs (and it reads like the French as well) what to have the competition run by the teams in them. Now you can say that's a power grab or whatever but we haven't reached a final solution. Would it be a power grab if the share of the votes was the same between countries but all the English votes were held by the PRL, all the French votes held by the LNR, all the Welsh votes held by RRW, all the Irish votes held by the Provinces (i.e. IRFU), the Socttish votes held by their teams (i.e. SRU) and the Italian votes were held by their teams (i.e. 50:50 between Treviso and FIR)? So no power grab in terms of from other unions, just their own unions? Would that be a bad system?

And on to finances, what if involvement in the EC and CC gave a fixed sum and then you had performance bonuses on top of it? Not enough to create massive differences but enough to incentivise. So the base (for example) Scottish wedge was the same value every year. If they get two teams in the EC they get a bit more (enough to make them try and get in), if they don't they get a bit less over all. If in the CC them get more if they get to the QF/SF/F (perhaps as much for being in the EC if they get in the final?). Not sure.

There is plenty of scope for reasonable structures interms of competition, commercial and administrative. We don't know how these discussions are going, what direction they're taking, what each party wants exactly. We're spitballing, taking quotes from sensationist media articles and trying to piece it together. But proposals are NOT final agreements. If they are it suggests a monumental collapse from one side or the other (if we end up with exactly what we have now or the French proposals of 6,6,6). And they were the French proposals, the original English one was 8,8,8 but the French didn't like that so they dropped it.

BTW I found the original article on here when the English gave their notice. Nice read. Created a lot more fuss than the when the French did it two weeks before.

I remember the 5/6N being England v france and then the wooden spoon competition.  Since the Rabo has been formed each union has improved.

If there was a competion with the S15 would they say 50% of S15 with 50% prem and T14.  Of course not.

I do not want to go back to a time where the Rabo unions made up the numbers and the only way to do it is to keep the rabo.  If players play in France and England soon youngsters will be in English and french academies.  (Ask SA and NZ)

I accually think there is a desire for a NH S15 style tournament.  It is most likely that at first the french wont join but after three years the big boys in france will want in.  The reason Toulouse always tried in HC was they felt they need a bigger challange then the T14 same for the rise of Toulon and Clermount.

So you have the 12 Rabos plus 6 english.  you could do two levels of 9 plus a cup.
Add in 6 french and you have two levels of 12 teams.
Now safe gaurds could be put in like there must be a minium of one team per union in the top level.

Just like with SA if you want promotion each union can do it  and just like the lions you can loan out players to help you shed wages.

We will end up with this one way or the other.  How long before the top teams in England and France feel they are being held back.

This also allows England to have two good levels of professional rugby.

Also i don't think the Rabo unions would go bust, lets be honest they are sugar daddys like the french and English. Yes the Rabbo unions are payinh off stadiums but must are nearly finished.

I really hope we don't have a S15 type competition. 6-9 games is plenty for the Euro competition.