New British and Irish Cup?

First topic message reminder :

Getting this second hand from @chrisjharrison on twitter, who seems to be referencing an article by Stephen Jones (spit) in the Sunday Times which is of course behind their paywall.

He says that the English and Welsh teams (so presumably PRL and RRW as opposed to the Welsh and English Unions) are proposing a new British and Irish Cup on BT Sport to replace European rugby- all Premiership sides to participate, plus 10 provinces and regions from Ireland, Scotland and Wales giving the rather uneven and confusing number of 22 sides.

Can anyone shed more light on this? Understand Camou feels like he can take the French out of the equation unless he gets exactly what he wants regarding FIRA-AER, but why exclude the Italian sides? Also assume this competition is to run parallel with the leagues and not replace them?

Would be pretty disappointed. Be about the same number of teams as the Heineken Cup except we'd be replacing the likes of Clermont, Toulouse and Toulon with Worcester, Newcastle and London Irish. No disrespect to those teams but you're losing a lot of the glamour fixtures, a lot of the big games- and the teams facing relegation in the Premiership will always be more focused on that. Is it worth trying to holdout for a deal that brings the French back on board?

Interesting comments from Jeff Probyn

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/25621306