Is England club rugby now > England?

It seems to me that the power of big money makes it only a matter of time before moneybags owners will make it inevitable that like football, the country's International fans will rue the day that the PRL was formed.

I'm just blue-skying a few ideas here:

1. Scrap the wage cap as it stands and base it on a % of current turnover (i.e. exclusive of capital expenditure).
2. Create structured a national Academy structure based on the Divisions under the auspices of the RFU and out of the clubs' hands. At it's peak to ensure both rugby and academic/trade qualifications. The creation of an iter-divisional U-18s and other age groups competition.
3. Reduce the number of sides in the Premier league to eight and create a twelve side Championship (possibly including teams at the bpex of their top leagues) to bridge the divide between top sides and the rest.

The quid pro quos might include:

Ground tenuership and suitability:
The RFU to fund on a 50:50 basis to loan clubs to improve/secure appropriate 10000+ stadia to Jeff standards.

Two or three additional internationals per season (not necessarily in London) to pay for my mad agenda.

The abandonment of the playoffs.

You know I am going to disagree on much of that, and why, so shall keep schtum.

Agree that Academies should be required to ensure players get an academic/vocational qualification along with the rugby. Most academies do this already of course.

Ok here we go.

1. Scrap the wage cap as it stands and base it on a % of current turnover (i.e. exclusive of capital expenditure).

The wage cap restricts the number of aging foreign journey hasbeens coming to get a final pay as is happening in France currently.

The additional incentives that the RFU offers the clubs for bringing through and playing young English players has improved the standard of clubs (now playing attacking attractive rugby) and the national team. Even Sarries now are in the HC final.

Why spoil all this by scrapping the wage cap and allowing clubs to risk bankruptcy and sign all manner of foreign hasbeens again at the expense of young English talent.

2. Create structured a national Academy structure based on the Divisions under the auspices of the RFU and out of the clubs' hands. At it's peak to ensure both rugby and academic/trade qualifications. The creation of an iter-divisional U-18s and other age groups competition.

Why change anything in the academies? They are working! Look at the recent JWC victory.
Look at the players coming through for England.

Second row for example.
Slater, Kitchener, Barrow, Itoje, kruis, Stooke...Lawes, Launchbury

The academies are producing the talent and the clubs are playing them. Dont change whats beginning to work!

3. Reduce the number of sides in the Premier league to eight and create a twelve side Championship (possibly including teams at the bpex of their top leagues) to bridge the divide between top sides and the rest.

Again....why change it? can you give me a reason why you would want this?

The abandonment of the playoffs.

Why? Whilst i originally didnt like the idea, it now creates excitment and all teams know where they stad.

Though the play offs for the championship promotion should be scrapped!

GF, you didn't read his salary cap bit properly. He want's it based on turnover (which Leicester has the largest in England) not scrapped completely.

It seems to be a [insert random statement] followed by [Portnoy's usual list of corrective action]

1. We could do this be it would pretty much cause the complete collapse of the domestic league. I think Tigers have something like 150% the turnover of Saints and 200% that of Exeter (£20M-£15M-£10M). These are the well run, profit making teams.

2. Pretty much agree with LT and GF, it's working fine as is and there should be trade qualifications, and generally are.

3. 8 teams in the premiership would be a loss of 4 games for each team. Assuming an equal attendance for each that would be a more than a third drop in ticket sales. And for what reason? Player fatigue? Why not just implement a rule stating the maximum number of games a player can play?

Actually yes your right i did focus on the "scrapping" part.

However i still say based on turnover it would need to be carefully managed. There is already a group at the top, a middle tier and a bottom tier in the prem.

Increasing wages based on turnover could increase the gap in the teams which i dont believe is a good thing for the league or English rugby.

The clubs are improving, their performances on the pitch are improving (more attractive attacking rugby), there are more young English players coming through, we have an English team in the HC final etc etc, lets not change things just as the improvments are there for all to see.

Isn't there an Academy league U18s

 contains (also these where the standings in the end as well) 

 North conference
Northampton
Leicester
Gloucester
Leeds
Sale
Worcester
Newcastle

 South Conference
Exeter
Harliquins
Bath
London Irish
Saracens
Bristol
Wasps

 I would be more in favour of a proper "A league" set-up, Where clubs can have a certain amount of Senior players say 5, and use it for getting players back from long term injuries in a low pressure environment (maybe excluding WC props) Maybe give free tickets to members and season tickets holders Tigers use to do this.

 Tigers team could be for this season. (Players that have or are long term injuryed)

  1) Bristow
  2) Thacker
  3) Brugnara
  4) De Cheves
  5) Cain (Parling)
  6) Wells (Mafi)/ (Croft)
  7) Owen
  8) Noone
  9) Steele
10) Tresidder
11) Williams (Benjamin)
12) Heptema (Bowden, Allen)
13) Pohe (Smith)
14) Purdy (Camacho)
15) Humphreys (Morris)

16) Farnsworth
17) Schuster
18) Pasquali
19) Price
20) Milne
21) Prince
22) Bryant
23) Catchpole/ Dunn

 With U18's players like Hills, Hubbart, D WIlliams, Beckett,  Farthing, Charlie Thacker can get some LV cup type experience throughout the season.

 suppose the main trouble is not everyone has depth like that.

Point one would just mean you would just hand the title to Leicester ever year...

I do agree with point two though, the current regional academy is just ring fencing by another name. All the best youngsters will end up in the premier academies plus Leeds and Bristol. Every other club member of the rfu is therefore a second class citizen/ feeder club effectively.

Scrap the wage cap. There are bigger budgets in Top14 so if it was purely a wage level incentive for players to move all the top players would be in France.

Why can the little teams shackle the bigger teams? Where is the merit in that? It doesn't sound like the kind of thing the PRL would stand for.

The cost of the academies run centrally could become a pro rata offset (a tax) on current expenditure of pro clubs collected by the RFU. There are Divisions of the RFU - Northern, Midlands, London (S.E Eng and the East) and South West.

Each could contest an internal academy competition which could then selection basis for a divisional competition for age level national competition.

At age 16+ a compulsory educational component would (should) be required.

At 18+ a compulsory degree/employment qualification at an appropriate Uni/College would be equally required on a no pass no play basis.

All academecians to be paid no more than the 'Living Wage'.

In very exceptional circumstances, very talented acamedicians may be released to professional clubs on the production on a bond from the pro club to ensure that the on-going academic/skills training is completed.

Oh and

Bathman wrote:Point one would just mean you would just hand the title to Leicester ever year...

Would it? I'm not sure it would you know.

It just seems to me that the current system in England is analogous to the pre-collapse conditions of the financial markets.

A bit of financial prudence might be welcomed in most quarters.

Newcastle under Hall and his lackey, Squeaky started the ball rolling. And look where that got them.

thebandwagonsociety wrote:Scrap the wage cap.  There are bigger budgets in Top14 so if it was purely a wage level incentive for players to move all the top players would be in France.

Why can the little teams shackle the bigger teams?  Where is the merit in that?  It doesn't sound like the kind of thing the PRL would stand for.

It is though.

That's the way capitalists work. First secure the market and then the supply of the resources.
Economists dignify the the activity with the term vertical integration.
Wray & Co are thinking wider by extending their aspirations to horizontal integration.

Actually the most successful capitalists seek to grow the market not secure it.

And prl, for all their ills, clearly have a mandate to try to grow the appeal of the AP. Which is why teams agree to the salary caps, EQP percentages, etc, etc.

Seems pretty obvious to me that prl's moves are all generally aimed at growing revenues for participating clubs (audiences, sponsors, tv, competitiveness of league)

That would be growing the revenues of the cartel incumbents, quins. Not rugby in general.

Fortunately they've not yet been able to undermine the sporting constitution of the RFU and promotion/relegation.














Yet.

I agree it's a cartel.

Don't think club rugby is in any danger at all of overtaking international.

That's a big reason why I am not worried at all by clubs trying to flex their muscles in Europe to stop losing money.

The idea of somehow centralising academy activity is insane. The academies are working fine, producing the talent with diverse approaches to the game. Centralising would just produce clones of one style. Leave it alone. Hard though it is to hang on to your own academy products it is still a matter of great pride to see your own youngsters succeed.

I share and empathise with your pov, aitch. But if the academies were run and financed by the RFU paid for in effect by a tax on the big clubs, the burden of running academies like Leeds, Newcastle, LI, Exeter etc. the financial onus could be defrayed.

In the Divisions, no doubt all the established, successful ones w/could be retained as centres of excellence within the national structure.

Remember, that no club in England is free from its poachers and I'll repeat what I put in a post to GF in the Falcons' thread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1ICS21RWrg

Portnoy's Complaint wrote:

thebandwagonsociety wrote:Scrap the wage cap.  There are bigger budgets in Top14 so if it was purely a wage level incentive for players to move all the top players would be in France.

Why can the little teams shackle the bigger teams?  Where is the merit in that?  It doesn't sound like the kind of thing the PRL would stand for.

It is though.

That's the way capitalists work. First secure the market and then the supply of the resources.
Economists dignify the the activity with the term vertical integration.
Wray & Co are thinking wider by extending their aspirations to horizontal integration.

Cannot agree with you on this one.  Have we discussed this before?

The salary cap is the way to financial security.  Just ask the NFL.  In 2014, their salary cap will be 133 million dollars, not a paltry 5 or 6 million sterling.  It asolutely works.  And the billionaire owners of the NFL teams agree to complete transparency so everyone knows where each team is relative to the cap.  The key is to require Premiership teams to require every team to be able to have pay a minimum salary threshold.  Perhaps 75% of maximum, for example.  Currently, not all teams can probably be paying up to 75%, so they will need to find other revenue streams or fall by the way-side as other clubs come up. However, we need to have the balance such that more than a few teams can getr to the max, or it becomes a playground of the rich.

And, oh yes, by the boots of Saint Jonny, the clubs and England should and will always live in a balance, if not harmony.

Doc, A couple of things occur to me:
1. American sports - football in particular - are physically, financially and geographically isolated from the rest of the World. So national decisions are not impacted by destabilising foreign decisions.
2. How do NFL authorities manage to gain access to the financial records to ensure fair play in the capped market? Over here only two Jeff clubs are organised as public companies and as such squeezing out the bare minimum of financial information must be a nightmare from the maze of Kafkaesque structures of holding companies and so on providing a cloak of near invisibility surrounding their internal finances.

Do we have to go over this again?

1. Cap linked to turnover works if you are trying to prevent soccer superclubs going bust. It does not work if you are trying to create a sustainable, competitive league in an immature professional sport. Now is not the time. It isn't even in the long term interests of Tigers to have that kind of cap, because they'll run out of domestic competition. Let's talk again when we have 12-14 teams who can pull a regular crowd of 15,000 and turn a profit, but until then can we please forget about it? It won't work.

2. This could work but:
a) Why? What's problem with the current system is it trying to fix?
b) How would you go from the current system to a regional one, given the clubs have invested in their academies? Would the RFU buy out the academies? Set up rival ones (yeah, right)?
c) How would academy players go from the academies to the clubs? A quota system? An auction? A draft? How would any of that work with 1?
d) The likely outcome of this model is a de facto central contracting model. Which works against 1 and doesn't look likely to work for the Welsh

3. I assume this is designed to present player burnout and leave ample international windows but it would create huge problems of its own:
a) Who would be the initial 8?
b) How would you ensure reasonable coverage of the country? (Actually, as the table stands today you'd be OK-ish with Sale riding high)
c) How would you compensate the clubs who are forced back down to the Championship (and those forced out of the Championship itself)?
d) How would you make up the deficit in the top clubs for losing 50% of their league home take (and probably similar from their tv revenues)?
e) What would you do about the relegated players? Concentrate them in the 8 superclubs? Let them languish in the lower leagues? Neither option is ideal for club or country.

etc etc etc.

True, that there is no French league destabilising salaies for the NFL.  

I believe that a salary cap can only work with total transparency.  Each club gets audited by the league.  In fact, every contract must be filed with the League to ensure it is not in violation of any league rules.  Also, every contract is in the public domain so that nothing can be hidden.  Kind of amazing, but it works.  Only one  or two NFL clubs are publuc companies.  The rest are private holdings.

b) How would you go from the current system to a regional one, given the clubs have invested in their academies? Would the RFU buy out the academies? Set up rival ones (yeah, right)?

Strictly speaking, our academy (Falcons) is a regional one anyway. We cover down to Middlesbrough / Yarm way, up to Berwick, the borders, over to Cumbria.

We are both a club and Newcastle based club....but we also work all over the whole regon.

All the main academies I believe. They're just tied to the pro clubs. The Leeds one covers Yorkshire, Sale the Northwest, etc. Officially.