English RFU want to make Premiership into a NFL-style two-conference competition - the brand-new PRO16?

The Rugby Football Union has proposed expanding the Premiership to 16 teams – split into two conferences – to resolve the continuing debate over promotion and relegation.

Nigel Melville, the interim RFU chief executive, believes the move towards two conferences would be a ground-breaking one for the game, involving teams from different geographical boundaries, and would answer the long-standing issue of whether to ringfence the Premiership.

"Imagine having a competition where there would be maybe 14 or 16 teams split into two conferences and there would be no relegation.    The top 3 in each conference could qualify for a series of finals with quarters, semis and a final.  And they could qualify for the European Cup as well," one unnamed source from the PRO14 said.

Explaining that the RFU had been thinking about this for a very long time, - in the last two weeks - Melville said “If you expand, you have to go into a conference structure. You would go to 14 or 16 teams. Two eights would give you a true geographic spread,” he said. “Two eights would play home and away, then go into quarters, then go into semis. Then you could justify a proper conference structure with playoffs and fewer games."  

Apparently, nothing like this has ever been done before in rugby, and Melville believes it would move the game forward immeasurably.  Melville and his colleagues researched lots of ideas and competition structures and could find nothing so the RFU looked to the USA to see what possible model they could follow.

“If you look at the NFL, they don’t have a cup competition and they're divided into conferences. They focus on their core business. We’ve got nearly 1,200 professional players in the country and maybe the reason is that we’ve got so many competitions going on with elite players. That’s money going out of the game. It’s not going into infrastructure. Maybe we get down to 1,000 or 800 players.”

It would also mean the Premiership clubs would have to divide their shares by 16, rather than 13 as they do now, but with CVC’s £240m impending investment that would be less of stumbling block for the owners.

“You can put things on the agenda,” he said. “You can have those conversations about these issues. With the Premiership we have these chats all the time. The CVC investment could be interesting, and you could start to float ideas – can we do some things better, or differently? You’d have to divide the money by 16, which makes a difference. Sometimes less is more. It’s always about now [for the clubs], or about next week, especially with the league at the moment. But strategic thinking is about looking at the bigger picture and I think we need to do that.”

Meanwhile, the clubs in the Celtic League can only look on with envy with one source commenting - "how come our shareholders/management never come up with ground-breaking ideas like this? Oh hang on...."

It's a crap system

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/dec/08/premiership-rugby-relegation-and-promotion

Link to article there.

Assuming your team doesn’t make the play offs it would be strange to just play the same 7 teams season after season.

Stupid idea just to fill some newspaper column inches.
The Anglo welsh cup has been ditched and this new premiership cup should go too, with perhaps just a much shorter knockout comp with Championship teams . The new monies coming in for a minority share of the league, can cover any medium term financial shortfalls from fewer fixtures, as well as all the infrastructure costs that are needed across the league.

If one or two Unions continue to put current Test teams into a euro club competition, then that should be ditched too and just have the two and a half month 6N tournament as the Euro competition. That should shorten the season, less is more.
Club rugby here should not be played into June just to keep the the Super Rugby globetrotters afloat.

Recwatcher16 wrote:Stupid idea just to fill some newspaper column inches.
The Anglo welsh cup has been ditched and this new premiership cup should go too, with perhaps just a much shorter knockout comp with Championship teams . The new monies coming in for a minority share of the league, can cover any medium term financial shortfalls from fewer fixtures, as well as all the infrastructure costs that are needed across the league.

If one or two Unions continue to put Test teams into a euro club competition, then that should be ditched too and just have the two and a half month 6N tournament as the Euro competition. That should shorten the season, less is more.
Club rugby here should not be played into June just to keep the the Super Rugby globetrotters afloat.

Agree with you about unions putting test teams into euro club competition. They should be just using locally born players.

Rec, the only issue with pulling out of Europe and dumping the cup is where does the extra money come from.  CVC as a substantial shareholder will be taking a cut of profits.  Home games in the Euro Cup and TV money would need to be replaced.

If the English teams only played 30 games a season against English opposition it would lead to a drop in the international team.  The euros improve everyone as standards are higher.  Look at the English soccer club expulsion from Europe to see how they dropped in standards compared to everyone else

How could Sarries improve when the only challange they get each year is in Europe. Exeter over the last few years have shown exactly why the English need to play teams outside of the Premiership. Add in if teams are only playing for one cup and only Sarries or Exeter can win it and there is nothing else to fight for in the league it will lose interest fast.

Biggest thing for me from this article is the desire to drop professional player numbers.  If England and South Africa cut 800 professional players between them the player fees might drop with so many people looking for work.  With France looking to add in a third professional tier could we see half or more of the professional leagues in Europe being French.

stub wrote:
Assuming your team doesn’t make the play offs it would be strange to just play the same 7 teams season after season.

Agreed. Seems very odd to look at the NFL's conference structure, but then completely ignore how well set up their scheduling is so teams are playing varied opposition every season outside of the traditional rivalries which have been kept in place.

“We have got to grow the league in a way that is sustainable and workable. I think the best number for our competition is 16. Strange as it may sound, that will actually allow us to play less rugby. Going to 16 sides would make that possible. We have worked it out. Having changed our format, we can be a little more flexible.”

“...the overwhelming consensus of the chief executives is lets make positive changes that are good for the tournament. You have to be creative. If you going to play all your games outside of the international window, then you either have to look at a reduction in the number of teams or look at a different structure to the season with conferences, which allows you to expand.”

said Martin Anayi two years ago.

Brendan wrote:Rec, the only issue with pulling out of Europe and dumping the cup is where does the extra money come from.  CVC as a substantial shareholder will be taking a cut of profits.  Home games in the Euro Cup and TV money would need to be replaced.

If the English teams only played 30 games a season against English opposition it would lead to a drop in the international team.  The euros improve everyone as standards are higher.  Look at the English soccer club expulsion from Europe to see how they dropped in standards compared to everyone else

How could Sarries improve when the only challange they get each year is in Europe.  Exeter over the last few years have shown exactly why the English need to play teams outside of the Premiership. Add in if teams are only playing for one cup and only Sarries or Exeter can win it and there is nothing else to fight for in the league it will lose interest fast.

Brendan,
What you forget is that rugby existed perfectly well for a hundred and twenty years without a European competition.

Whilst more money is never turned down, if it is just to create ever bigger squads to take the fixture strain, it becomes self defeating.
Investment in a domestic league has to be the priority, with local and wider rivalries generating consistent interest and becomes self perpetuating - look at the French league. The GP is falling behind by being distracted by other demands. Did you know that the weekends Leinster game at the Rec did not sell out, despite it being a virtual irish test side in all but name.
The GP has flatlined the salary cap, in order to invest in infrastructure, which is having consequences and every side is piling money in to their academies, which is a cheap investment but that takes time, which is why there is all the talk on having a moratorium on relegation.

As far as your point about Saracens goes, I remember folk saying the same about the Bath, Leicester & Wasps sides of yesteryear. Nothing lasts forever, unless you are an artificial guaranteed elite trials side whose players get experience of playing together at the next different tier up of the game.

I agree it's a silly idea. Intrigued by you being annoyed about Leinster though rec. Should we start to put limits of the amount of internationals in teams?

Pot Hale wrote:

Recwatcher16 wrote:Stupid idea just to fill some newspaper column inches.
The Anglo welsh cup has been ditched and this new premiership cup should go too, with perhaps just a much shorter knockout comp with Championship teams . The new monies coming in for a minority share of the league, can cover any medium term financial shortfalls from fewer fixtures, as well as all the infrastructure costs that are needed across the league.

If one or two Unions continue to put Test teams into a euro club competition, then that should be ditched too and just have the two and a half month 6N tournament as the Euro competition. That should shorten the season, less is more.
Club rugby here should not be played into June just to keep the the Super Rugby globetrotters afloat.

Agree with you about unions putting test teams into euro club competition.   They should be just using locally born players.    

Like Sarries do?  ~all english born every one of them - or Like Racing - Parisians to a man!

Remeber that Even Lienster the richest of the pro 14 clubs has nowjere ner the spending of the top english and french clubs - and Glasgow with its 30+ internationals would not even reach the salery cap in England by several millions.

Is rugby the only sport on the planet that wants to reduce the number of professional participants and teams ?

Recwatcher16 wrote:

Brendan,
What you forget is that rugby existed perfectly well for a hundred and twenty years without a European competition.

Did you know that the weekends Leinster game at the Rec did not sell out, despite it being a virtual irish test side in all but name.

1st sentence: Of course rugby existed perfectly well for 120 years.... it was amateur for most of it.  Doctors, famers, solicitors, etc, etc...................  Traditions argument doesn't work too well in this cut-throat profit/growth/money/greed world.

2nd sentence: Thank you for pointing that out.  Now tell a select bunch of Welsh posters that and all will be well for rugby's future.  Incidentally, we should'a sent our 3rd string - they play better rugby

Irish Londoner wrote:Is rugby the only sport on the planet that wants to reduce the number of professional participants and teams ?

Well look at football.  That's such an overstuffed animal, it's positively psychotic - it's eating itself voraciously.  

Leagues- sub leagues...of leagues... of cups...of plates...of more leagues...of more results shows...of more manager claptrap in print and online and on TV and on Twitter....and then more leagues and Europe and leagues and European leagues and more charts and lists and league sheets and more guff spoken by players and managers.


Way way too much of a good thing?  No - not for addicts anyway.  The rest of us have a life to service.  Can't have Sky sport/BT sport on 24 hours a day and still live.

Less is more.  Maybe it's why I love rugby.  If I go away for a few weeks or a few months, I haven't missed that much.

TJ wrote:

Pot Hale wrote:

Recwatcher16 wrote:Stupid idea just to fill some newspaper column inches.
The Anglo welsh cup has been ditched and this new premiership cup should go too, with perhaps just a much shorter knockout comp with Championship teams . The new monies coming in for a minority share of the league, can cover any medium term financial shortfalls from fewer fixtures, as well as all the infrastructure costs that are needed across the league.

If one or two Unions continue to put Test teams into a euro club competition, then that should be ditched too and just have the two and a half month 6N tournament as the Euro competition. That should shorten the season, less is more.
Club rugby here should not be played into June just to keep the the Super Rugby globetrotters afloat.

Agree with you about unions putting test teams into euro club competition.   They should be just using locally born players.    

Like Sarries do?  ~all english born every one of them - or Like Racing - Parisians to a man!

Remeber that Even Lienster the richest of the pro 14 clubs has nowjere ner the spending of the top english and french clubs - and Glasgow with its 30+ internationals would not even reach the salery cap in England by several millions.

Most analyses I have seen indicate that the playing budgets of Leinster and Munster are very similar to those of top English sides i.e. salary cap plus marquees.


Why would they not be? After all the money from Six Nations is divided equally between countries with England sharing that with twelve rather than four teams.

Exiledinborders wrote:

TJ wrote:

Pot Hale wrote:

Recwatcher16 wrote:Stupid idea just to fill some newspaper column inches.
The Anglo welsh cup has been ditched and this new premiership cup should go too, with perhaps just a much shorter knockout comp with Championship teams . The new monies coming in for a minority share of the league, can cover any medium term financial shortfalls from fewer fixtures, as well as all the infrastructure costs that are needed across the league.

If one or two Unions continue to put Test teams into a euro club competition, then that should be ditched too and just have the two and a half month 6N tournament as the Euro competition. That should shorten the season, less is more.
Club rugby here should not be played into June just to keep the the Super Rugby globetrotters afloat.

Agree with you about unions putting test teams into euro club competition.   They should be just using locally born players.    

Like Sarries do?  ~all english born every one of them - or Like Racing - Parisians to a man!

Remeber that Even Lienster the richest of the pro 14 clubs has nowjere ner the spending of the top english and french clubs - and Glasgow with its 30+ internationals would not even reach the salery cap in England by several millions.

Most analyses I have seen indicate that the playing budgets of Leinster and Munster are very similar to those of top English sides i.e. salary cap plus marquees.


Why would they not be? After all the money from Six Nations is divided equally between countries with England sharing that with twelve rather than four teams.

Why would 6 nations money be shared with clubs???

The Oracle wrote:

Exiledinborders wrote:

TJ wrote:

Pot Hale wrote:

Recwatcher16 wrote:Stupid idea just to fill some newspaper column inches.
The Anglo welsh cup has been ditched and this new premiership cup should go too, with perhaps just a much shorter knockout comp with Championship teams . The new monies coming in for a minority share of the league, can cover any medium term financial shortfalls from fewer fixtures, as well as all the infrastructure costs that are needed across the league.

If one or two Unions continue to put Test teams into a euro club competition, then that should be ditched too and just have the two and a half month 6N tournament as the Euro competition. That should shorten the season, less is more.
Club rugby here should not be played into June just to keep the the Super Rugby globetrotters afloat.

Agree with you about unions putting test teams into euro club competition.   They should be just using locally born players.    

Like Sarries do?  ~all english born every one of them - or Like Racing - Parisians to a man!

Remeber that Even Lienster the richest of the pro 14 clubs has nowjere ner the spending of the top english and french clubs - and Glasgow with its 30+ internationals would not even reach the salery cap in England by several millions.

Most analyses I have seen indicate that the playing budgets of Leinster and Munster are very similar to those of top English sides i.e. salary cap plus marquees.


Why would they not be? After all the money from Six Nations is divided equally between countries with England sharing that with twelve rather than four teams.

Why would 6 nations money be shared with clubs???

In England because the RFU have agreed to share some their income with the clubs. They have done this in order to help the clubs develop the international players who provide most of the RFU's income.


The position is slightly different in Ireland because the provinces are just branches of the IRFU but the principle is the same. The provinces develop the players who then play for Ireland which produces the IRFU's income which it then distributes to the provinces to develop more players.

Exiledinborders wrote:

The Oracle wrote:

Exiledinborders wrote:

TJ wrote:

Pot Hale wrote:

Recwatcher16 wrote:Stupid idea just to fill some newspaper column inches.
The Anglo welsh cup has been ditched and this new premiership cup should go too, with perhaps just a much shorter knockout comp with Championship teams . The new monies coming in for a minority share of the league, can cover any medium term financial shortfalls from fewer fixtures, as well as all the infrastructure costs that are needed across the league.

If one or two Unions continue to put Test teams into a euro club competition, then that should be ditched too and just have the two and a half month 6N tournament as the Euro competition. That should shorten the season, less is more.
Club rugby here should not be played into June just to keep the the Super Rugby globetrotters afloat.

Agree with you about unions putting test teams into euro club competition.   They should be just using locally born players.    

Like Sarries do?  ~all english born every one of them - or Like Racing - Parisians to a man!

Remeber that Even Lienster the richest of the pro 14 clubs has nowjere ner the spending of the top english and french clubs - and Glasgow with its 30+ internationals would not even reach the salery cap in England by several millions.

Most analyses I have seen indicate that the playing budgets of Leinster and Munster are very similar to those of top English sides i.e. salary cap plus marquees.


Why would they not be? After all the money from Six Nations is divided equally between countries with England sharing that with twelve rather than four teams.

Why would 6 nations money be shared with clubs???

In England because the RFU have agreed to share some their income with the clubs. They have done this in order to help the clubs develop the international players who provide most of the RFU's income.  


The position is slightly different in Ireland because the provinces are just branches of the IRFU but the principle is the same. The provinces develop the players who then play for Ireland which produces the IRFU's income which it then distributes to the provinces to develop more players.

Apologies, I think I jumped on your wording and thought you meant ALL of the 6N money is shared with the clubs in England (as in, all of the RFU revenue from the 6N!), and that you meant all of the 6N countries do this!

How much money do England share from the 6N monies? I guess it’s dependent on how much they generate each year. Is it a %?

I guess Wales sort of does this. The WRU pays a set amount to each region for player release (although I think this is changing to reflect how many players each region contributes). It’s to cover the extra time Gats wants with players outside the normal window for extra training. Obviously that comes from WRU revenues including the 6N, but I know England pay the clubs for player release too so is this ‘gift’ from the RFU 6N revenues in addition to player release money?

Exiledinborders wrote:

TJ wrote:

Pot Hale wrote:

Recwatcher16 wrote:Stupid idea just to fill some newspaper column inches.
The Anglo welsh cup has been ditched and this new premiership cup should go too, with perhaps just a much shorter knockout comp with Championship teams . The new monies coming in for a minority share of the league, can cover any medium term financial shortfalls from fewer fixtures, as well as all the infrastructure costs that are needed across the league.

If one or two Unions continue to put Test teams into a euro club competition, then that should be ditched too and just have the two and a half month 6N tournament as the Euro competition. That should shorten the season, less is more.
Club rugby here should not be played into June just to keep the the Super Rugby globetrotters afloat.

Agree with you about unions putting test teams into euro club competition.   They should be just using locally born players.    

Like Sarries do?  ~all english born every one of them - or Like Racing - Parisians to a man!

Remeber that Even Lienster the richest of the pro 14 clubs has nowjere ner the spending of the top english and french clubs - and Glasgow with its 30+ internationals would not even reach the salery cap in England by several millions.

Most analyses I have seen indicate that the playing budgets of Leinster and Munster are very similar to those of top English sides i.e. salary cap plus marquees.


Why would they not be? After all the money from Six Nations is divided equally between countries with England sharing that with twelve rather than four teams.

Not quite - 75% of the money is split equally - approx 15m each. Next 10% is split according to size of union - Eng 4m, Fra 3.5m, Wales, Scotland, Italy, Ireland 600k each. Remainder is prize money earned according to performance and placing of each team. There are no published player salary budgets for Leinster and Munster but theyre unlikely to be of equal value.

It’s just the RFU, no need to say English.

I know, Cyril. People are far too wordy.

BRFU is fine.

I hesitate to ask, but what is the ‘B’, Mr Fly?

Cyril wrote:It’s just the RFU, no need to say English.

We've gone global on 606v2. Our foreign readers mightn't understand.....

Hardly. We have fewer and fewer posters on here by the week. It’s always the old faces and almost all from the Home Nations.

Cyril wrote:I hesitate to ask, but what is the ‘B’, Mr Fly?

Don't worry Cyril. It ain't dangerous. It's just that it seems to have become the UK's new name these last few years. And given England are the biggest slice of UK.....

Brexit Rugby Football Union.

Cyril wrote:Hardly. We have fewer and fewer posters on here by the week. It’s always the old faces and almost all from the Home Nations.

Sorry but I Indentify as being from Keeanakaka, a mineral rich island off Never Never Land in the Sea of Tranquillity.

Do Not Abuse My Identity Rights!