How Long?

If we take the stance that the HEC is dead in the water and next season there will be a Franglo Cup, how long will it be before the chairmen of certain clubs start making statements such as:

"We need this competition to be seeded so that the top teams aviod each other in the early stages"
"The clubs who finish outside the top six should have to pre-qualify or should be moved down into a tier two tournament"
"Why does the money get split equally my team have much larger player budgets to pay so we should get more"
"Why does the money get split equally when X thousand come to see my team but Y thousand watch these teams - we are bigger draw so we should get more"
"We bring in the biggest TV audience so we should get more of the revenue than the others"

If another businessman does a John Hall at a currently struggling club "We need to have some form of financial fair play based on the size of your attendance and your income and not have sugar daddies making the playing field uneven".

That's why the clubs should not be allowed to run a competition, it will all come down to greedy owners fighting for turf and money.

Oh hold on......

It won't, just as similar things haven't happened in the AP or Top14.

Alcombe -was talking about a cup comptetion not a league.

I realise that, but things like splitting money based on each team's draw and expenditure would hold equally true for a league or cup if a club wanted to make that point.

The only thing you state that will happen is seeding in pools, as it does in every cup competition going.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yECYJlfym_w

Featuring our local shopkeeper's son on drums, and the singer/keyboard player won the Eurovision about 20 years later for Ireland with one of the cringiest songs ever.

Irish Londoner wrote:If we take the stance that the HEC is dead in the water and next season there will be a Franglo Cup, how long will it be before the chairmen of certain clubs start making statements such as:

"We need this competition to be seeded so that the top teams aviod each other in the early stages"
"The clubs who finish outside the top six should have to pre-qualify or should be moved down into a tier two tournament"
"Why does the money get split equally my team have much larger player budgets to pay so we should get more"
"Why does the money get split equally when X thousand come to see my team but Y thousand watch these teams - we are bigger draw so we should get more"
"We bring in the biggest TV audience so we should get more of the revenue than the others"

If another businessman does a John Hall at a currently struggling club "We need to have some form of financial fair play based on the size of your attendance and your income and not have sugar daddies making the playing field uneven".

Thats my concern. I have no problem with the spirit of the Franglo demands. The reason I hope the ERC survives is the next set of negotiations. The ones were we've signed over our fate to the clubs in England and France and they decide to really take us up the backdoor and there's nothing we can do about it.

After the way the PRL have behaved through all this, would anyone trust them to act in good faith going forward?

Notch - exactly right, every single one of the excuses above has been used by the rich clubs in the Champions League as arguements as to why they should get the lions share of the money - result all the same sides qualify and make the money every year.
I've said this before on other threads but my underlying issue with the Franglo proposals is that within ten years rugby in Europe will be at the same place football is now - except with only two financial powers.

Why shouldn't clubs that generate the most money get their share? What is the incentive for a club to maximise their marketing, their fan base etc if they get the same amount of money regardless of their efforts or not? The only incentive that gives clubs is to not try at all.... why waste revenue gained?

The problem with all of the 'anti-current HC set up' arguments is that they call for a club competition for only 'the best'. But what is 'the best'? If you take the top 16 clubs then 12 of them are going to be better than the worst 4, obviously, and eventually in a meritocracy those bottom 4 will be shunned as they bring little to the table. The remaining 12 will be deemed the best, until someone realises that 4 of those teams are weaker than the rest, so 8 will be left, and so on until we have a club competition with Clermont and Leinster.

Now, I'm torn between having places for all 6 participating nations guaranteed (which I like in terms of it being a truly European Cup), and having qualification from the Rabo based on finishing spots (which could mean less European involvement but better teams). I'd probably accept the latter as a compromise if need be to save the competition. However, what I feel we cannot and should not do is ever bow to pressure to only include the teams with the biggest 'draw', either TV or gate-wise. For the reasons I say above, you'd soon be down to a handful of teams. And eventually watching that would be sh*t. Part of what makes the HC great, IMO, is having the lesser teams pitted against the big guns. Big guns v big guns all the time would get tedious.

Fa0019 - no one is stopping the clubs increasing their revenue from marketing, imcreasing the fan base, getting more sponsors on board or anything else - in fact these are the streams that they should be trying to grow to create income - it's this income that seperates Leicester from Sale.

My concern about the revised format is the long term damage this will do, not only to rugby accross Europe (Ireland and Wales will sooner or later join in but it will kill professional rugby outside of those two), but the damage to the international game and also the the game in England - the already rich will get richer and the rest may get enough to cover their losses - the game will go even further in the way of Premier League football with a few dominant clubs - who mainly rely on imported talent, half a dozen who can just about hang on in the top table and the yo-yo clubs to/from the Championship - assuming that at some point the PRL don't decide to ring fence.
Look at what has happened to the international fortunes of all the home nations since the Premier League/Champions League.

how will it damage the national game?

So from that I assume you're worried that the game will get filled with more and more foreign players and that home grown players will reduce? Its a genuine concern I agree for all of rugby in Europe.... but isn't that already occurring?

Look at Ireland, taking players such as CJ Stander as special project players signed off by the IRFU and whose contract stipulates that they will allign themselves with the Irish national team once residency has been fulfilled... i.e. if SA comes banging on his door right now his contract with Munster will be cancelled.

National unions need to have a say in the leagues I agree.... an equal share of the voting... making sure that foreign players are limited, especially at a young age where player development and game time is so important.

Unless stipulations such as the above are introduced its the way the European game will go... regardless of whether or not the game stays as it is or goes the Anglo-French route.