Heineken Cup talks "have now ended"

[Feicarsinn]

Peat has hinted at it, but the English clubs aren't like to gain a great deal out of this situation. One would imagine that in the new competition the spoils will be split evenly with the English and French clubs. Seeing as the Top 14 clubs are already massively ahead of them financially, having parity on one competition isn't likely to change the balance of power in their direction. As things stand the Premiership doesn't generate enough revenue for them to compete with the likes of Clermont and Toulon and with a lower salary cap negating the effects of a generous benefactor a change in the structure of European competition isn't likely to alter their fortunes.

 

[Groundhog]

If this goes ahead, I don't think either tournament (Rabo Direct 2: Bank Harder or Britty ****ty Frogball) can exist independent of each other. Honestly does anyone want to see the diversity of the Heineken Cup limited. The HC would be nothing without the presence of the English, Irish and French (Welsh when they get their **** together). OF COURSE the Rabo teams didn't roll over. Each union has a weak team It wants to protect. I reckon in a two nation competition the French would have even less interest than they show already (see racing metro vs munster) and where else will they attract quality opposition from if not the Rabo Teams? Maybe you can attract some quality opposition from Romania. That wouldn't cheapen the competition more than the presence of Connacht (sarcasm is implied).
That said I can appreciate the fact that it's frustrating that teams like Zebre qualify automatically, but after a line of failed franchises the second Italian team need a big audience if it hopes to survive.

 

[j'nuh]

F**k right off you arrogant prick.


You ever wonder why the rest of the world labels (unfairly or not) the English as arrogant? Read your post back to yourself.

What the **** are you talking about?

Apparently giving a **** about what happens to the game in Wales and Ireland is arrogant?

I don't care about what's right or wrong in all of this. It's a matter of power.

The practical option was to accept the earlier deal when it was possible. By being stubborn (whether they were right in doing so or not), they've put themselves in a precarious position that may effectively end the game in Wales and Ireland. They overestimated their power, and are now even worse off for it. This is unforgivable.

Even 1% of the European money split is more than 100% of nothing.

 

[Amiga500]

What the **** are you talking about?

Apparently giving a **** about what happens to the game in Wales and Ireland is arrogant?

By your reckoning regardless of the conditions, the Celtic/Italian teams should have grovelled before the mighty English and accepted whatever demands they were making?

What if they were asking for the Celtic/Italian peasants to pay for the privilege of playing the noble English?



To paraphrase you and apply it to the British government and joining the Eurozone.

"If I could sum up how the British government have acted in this whole affair in one image:
They should have leapt at the demands from the EU. They should have rolled over at the first opportunity and retained some kind of control over the situation."


See how f**king daft it reads now?




edit: Sorry, my previous post was a bit over the top. But your suggestion is almost completely nonsensical and more than a little insulting.

 

[snoopy snoopy dog dog]

Yet it's still Premiership Rugby who are doing all the talking.

The French wanted a 20 team competition, right? Pull out the seemingly withdrawn 6 English teams from the Heineken Cup and add two more French sides and we arrive at the magical figure of 20. Job done.

This isn't over yet.

 

[Peat]

Re - England's position vis a vis the French & the case of Toby Flood:

The lure of England caps and appearance money is a big one, but it's obvious that someone in Flood's position is weighing up whether they're fool's gold. If he gets injured, he gets none of it, if Lancaster sticks with his preference for Farrell, he mightn't get the bench spot.

This is where one big part of the threat lies imo. Not your Tuilagis and your Launchburys, but your Sheridans, your Armitages, your Floods, your Kennedys. The international team may or may not miss them, but the domestic competition certainly will. I might try to see if I could find out how London Irish's gates went post the first big exodus, it's possibly ended them as a Premiership club. If we end up with the top thirty players outside the 22/EPS in France, what does that mean for the integrity and appeal of the league?

The other part is that is that if we don't really get a better chance of winning the, well, whatever. We don't have a great chance now, but really, Clermont/Toulouse/Toulon should empty whatever takes its place. If we wanted to improve the competitiveness of European competition, ganging up with the celts to slap on a wage cap would have been a great idea. But we didn't.

Because its not about that, its about money. And now we have to hope this caper earns up more than the French get. Or we are at a disadvantage.

Re Whose Fault Is This

Claiming the Pro12 people are entirely to blame, and that they refused to compromise, when our financial demands were clearly a huge sticking point and something we clearly refused to compromise on, does not strike me as a fair argument. The PRL and the French asked for a great deal. I suspect they possibly asked for more than they ever thought they would get, in the intent of destroying the ERC and replacing it with something in which they were bigger shareholders.

Regardless, there were six parties around the table, and no party should be shielded from blame. If European rugby dies, to be melodramatic, there is nowhere for us English to wriggle. Nowhere.

I would also add that even if they had accepted the English and French demands entirely, the others would have been in a perilous position regardless. Their income would have been down, ours would have been up. It is still a wound - potentially a mortal one. No, we certainly can't pretend there is no blame with us.

 

[Tony Manx]

The English are being driven by BT who have offered enormous sums for some sort of european/world competition that they can cover, as opposed to the H Cup which is Sky's, and owners like Wray who has the ambiton of that newspaper owner in that Bond movie "to rule and dominate the world".

Wray wants to move his Saracens to the world stage and have the competition extended to include the top clubs/regions/provinces of the other stong nations and form the elite "club" competition and stuff both national leagues and International teams. They are irrelevant to Wray and his ilk with their dream of rugby domination and playing rugby in USA, Dubai, SA et al..................!

Incidentally, I ain't half enjoying the prospect of an Anglo French alliance.....that really is a turn up where each side is helping the other as opposed to beating the **** out of each other or the Brits coming to the Frenchies' rescue!!!

 

[ratsapprentice]

Re - England's position vis a vis the French & the case of Toby Flood:

The lure of England caps and appearance money is a big one, but it's obvious that someone in Flood's position is weighing up whether they're fool's gold. If he gets injured, he gets none of it, if Lancaster sticks with his preference for Farrell, he mightn't get the bench spot.

This is where one big part of the threat lies imo. Not your Tuilagis and your Launchburys, but your Sheridans, your Armitages, your Floods, your Kennedys. The international team may or may not miss them, but the domestic competition certainly will. I might try to see if I could find out how London Irish's gates went post the first big exodus, it's possibly ended them as a Premiership club. If we end up with the top thirty players outside the 22/EPS in France, what does that mean for the integrity and appeal of the league?

I accept your point about the type of player that will be lured.

Re: London Irish - Their attendance only dropped significantly last season (from a steady 15k-ish to about 9k).
But the only high profile players that moved to France were the Armitages, Kennedy and Hape.
Most of the players they lost in 2011 stayed in the premiership: Thompstone, Bowden, Lamb, Hodgson, Dan Murphy.
Mapasua went to Japan, Casey retired.
This year most of their players stayed in the premiership again.
It seems to me that Brian Smith coming back in over Booth is what has driven their players away, those leaving seem to have been personally unhappy with him.

 

[Big Ewis]

now the French won't participate either, this is one gigantic mess. It's absolutely fkn ridiculous, and annoying as hell. And it's also fkn ridiculous.

 

[Peat]

Anyone got figures for how much the ERC competitions were worth to the Pro 12 unions?

Also - Rats - ok, doesn't seem to be too much direct causation there with LI; doesn't matter where players go after all. Gods knows they've got more problems than just other teams' money anyway. That said; Kennedy and the Armitages were the pick of the guys going out, and the guys I think we'd have liked to see the league keep.

 

[smartcooky]

From this side of the world, they all appear to have gone mad.

The Heineken Cup has been a brilliant competition for the last 18 years. I wasn't broken and it didn't need fixing but this stupidity ends of destroying it will be for one, and only one reason... greed. All this boilocks about fairness in qualification is just a smokescreen. This is purely and simply about more English and French clubs wanting a bigger slice of the pie.


As for an Anglo-French competition, well sorry, but

 

[ratsapprentice]

Anyone got figures for how much the ERC competitions were worth to the Pro 12 unions?

http://www.therugbypaper.co.uk/feat...posed-heineken-deal-leaves-rabo-with-peanuts/

However judging by the figures in last weeks' report both the Top 14 and the PRL stand to gain around £14m (increasing from £10.56 to £24m) while the RaboDirect will only get just over an extra £1m (up from £22.8m to £24m) hardly an incentive for change.

 

[dullonien]

It's amazing that the PRL and to a lesser extent Frances equivalent want to destroy a competition which has no rival in world rugby. It's draws are numerous, but imo an important one is its diversity. Take that away and you're at risk of producing a very one dimensional and rather boring competition, even if the teams taking part are of a high quality. I'm sure fans would prefer to play a team from France one weekend, followed by one from Ireland etc.

It seems that the PRL in particular are only concerned about the short term, that being the big money offer made by BT. But I can't see that being a sustainable thing long-term, or at least it doesn't have the long term potential of the Heineken Cup which includes Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Italy. The reduction in viewing figures is rather straight forward (the thing Sky/BT are interested in) as they will lose the millions of viewers tuning in from the Celtic and Italian countries.

I fully support the changes in qualification from the Pro12, although we deserve more than an equal representation given that the Pro12 is made up of four nations, but qualifying on league position would benefit both the HC and the Pro12. Glasgow and Treviso are good enough to finish in the top 8 already, so I don't necessarily think there's a need to make a rule that stipulates a minimum of one team from each nation. Whilst there could be years without Italian representation in the short term, I don't think it will be long until that won't be the case.

How the money is split is a difficult one. On the one hand England and France have more teams involved, but that's a bonus in itself, with more chance of success. Cut the funding to the other countries and all that's going to happen is weaken those sides, especially the Welsh, Scottish and Italian ones, which in turn affects the HC. So again I think that's short sighted greed, with rich English and French clubs only thinking about themselves. If they think a little about the longer term, having more financially stable Welsh, Scottish and Italian sides will increase the competitiveness of the HC, making it more alluring to supporters and drawing more viewers = more money for everybody. Surely the ultimate goal would be to have every team taking part as strong as possible, and all challenging each other, that won't happen if England and France get a bigger slice of the pie.

In all honesty, I have nothing nice to say about the PRL in the slightest. They are a self centred organisation, who seem to have no care about the wider rugby landscape, or even the players they supposedly represent (OK they technically represent the English clubs, but that involved representing the clubs players as well imo). Their stance on the release of players for international duty is akin to holding international unions to ransom, and they've taken a similar approach to the HC.

This whole thing is a complete farce, and if we end up loosing the HC because of it, imo the best rugby competition in the world (it's competitiveness trumps the Super 15), then I will be very, very angry.

Edit. Currently the revenue is divided with 52% split between the four Pro12 nations and 24% each to England and France. How the hell is that unfair? They already receive almost twice as much as each individual Pro12 nation. They wanted instead for each of the Pro12 nations to receive just 8.25%, with their cut rising to 33% each (so 4 times as much). Yeah that seems perfectly fair!!!!!

 

[coonor]

As a few people have mentioned, the Heineken Cup needed tweaking rather than abandonment. The qualification was the main problem, but that should have been easily sorted through reducing the Pro 12's involvement. However if the Celtic Unions and ERC refused on this proposal then I understand the English and French teams reasoning for leaving to competition. Having said that, the nature of the actions by the French and English clubs are certainly suggestive of jealousy. An Anglo-French Cup will never hold the standard of the Heineken Cup and while it may at first seem disastrous for the Celtic teams, this could act as a catalyst to raise the entire standard of the Pro12. Hopefully though we will see the Celtic teams join this new cup and in the future the competition will surpass the Heineken Cups quality.

 

[Jer1cho]

This is VERY interesting. I won't be surprised if SARU decide to get out of Super Rugby and join up with the North. Very real possibility, and a lot of the media here in SA is saying that SARU need to get on the NH bandwagon, and leave New Zealand and Aus to their own competition...

 

[profitius]

From this side of the world, they all appear to have gone mad.

Put it this way, if English and French clubs get their own way there'll be a lot more money in the clubs to lure the best southern hemisphere players there.

 

[TRF_stormer2010]

This is VERY interesting. I won't be surprised if SARU decide to get out of Super Rugby and join up with the North. Very real possibility, and a lot of the media here in SA is saying that SARU need to get on the NH bandwagon, and leave New Zealand and Aus to their own competition...

It would have jsut about as many upshots as problems IMO. I don't really care either way. On the one hand it makes our selecting Europe based players a lot more feasible and using the Currie cup (which HAS to have 8 teams then) as a qualifier to a HC type competition will reinvigorate the CC which is always a good thing IMO. It would also mean more money for our teams but would we be able to compete with the Pound or Euro then.. probably not entirely so we'll have to look at some sort of incentive to avoid our top players spreading out in droves..
Time zone also a big plus.

The other possible negative other than a possible exodus (though that's happening in any case!) is not playing the likes of the Chiefs and Crusaders regularly and not playing in Aus and NZ regularly which means our new test players wouldn't have had the advantage of getting used to those environments. On the other hand it means their players will probably get more of a shock playing here than we would playing there TBH. Competition level is a question but i feel the NH club teams are surely cmpetitve enough and there might even be more competitive teams than in SR. Its not like the best players are concentrated here any more and I would wager that will be the case more and more because of financial disparity.

 

[Packman]

I'm English, but I'm pretty ashamed and disgusted about the way PRL have acted. I was furious about it last season, now I'm fairly jaded because the writing has been on the wall for months. If I was ERC I would be looking over the Atlantic for new blood. ERC ought to invite North American represenatives to attend the talks about the formation of a new Northern Hem Competition.

Also, I kinda wish the English players will grow a backbone and actually fight this through their player's union. I believe they would have liked the current format to continue. Last season the english teams did pretty well, while the Irish were belowtheir best, which kinda blew PRL's arguments that the tournament favoured the Irish sides out of the water. It was a good tournament and I'll be disapointed if the players are not contacting Damian Hopley and asking him to arrange a players meeting to discuss the situation and what they can do about it. (alot if they cared enough, wouldn;t it be nice if someone actually fought for rugby for a change?).

As for the new Anglo / French competition, BT better not even think about raising the subscription price because it will be the last straw and that'll be £15/mth back in my pocket. The whole BT situation has strained my patience and my loyalty, I feel like I'm being fleeced as it is.

 

[Packman]

This is VERY interesting. I won't be surprised if SARU decide to get out of Super Rugby and join up with the North. Very real possibility, and a lot of the media here in SA is saying that SARU need to get on the NH bandwagon, and leave New Zealand and Aus to their own competition...

That's an interesting take on things from a SA point of veiw. I see where you are coming from especially as far as playing style and referee interpretation goes. It would be good for SA. It would devastate Antipodian rugby though. As a keen test match rugby fan I can't support that, so I hope it doesn't happen.

 

[Jer1cho]

Here is a nice article outlining the positives. There will be some negatives too obviously, but as a Springbok fan, I honestly think we need to get out of the SH competition. Super Rugby is a joke the way it is structured at the moment.

http://www.sarugbymag.co.za/column/details/sa-should-say-goodbye-to-super-rugby

Here's why that would be a good idea:

1. The travel factor. No longer will South African teams have to fly halfway across the world for four-week tours of Australasia, while Australasian sides pop over for just two weeks.2. No jet lag. South Africa is only an hour or two ahead of England and France, depending on the time of year, so the days of our players suffering from jet lag would be over.3. Suitable TV times for all concerned. How many Aussie and Kiwi fans bother to wake up in the early hours of the morning to watch Super Rugby games being played in South Africa? With three participating nations in a similar time zone, all matches could be played in the afternoon, evening and at night, when most people want to watch rugby. Good news for SuperSport and the European broadcasters.4. No Sanzar fatigue. South African franchises play against Aussie and Kiwi sides in Super Rugby from February until August, and then the Boks take on the All Blacks and Wallabies from August to October. That's the same players taking on the same players for nine months of the year. Being part of a European club competition would be mentally refreshing for our players.5. No split Sanzar revenue. South Africa generates most of the money for Sanzar in Super Rugby yet only gets a third of the revenue. A three-way split with wealthier rugby nations such as England and France would make far more sense. And more revenue would be generated by a European-SA competition than Super Rugby.6. No conference system. Super Rugby's conference system – which sees teams play those in their pool home and away, and only four of the five teams in the other pools – sucks. All it's done is given Australia the domestic competition they've always wanted with an added international element. South African derbies are also far more physical than those in New Zealand and Australia, which explains the number of injuries our teams have suffered since 2011. And four points for a bye ... really? Which Australian genius came up with that idea?7. Saffas abroad would be back on our radar. If the Stormers played Toulon, for example, the likes of Bakkies Botha, Danie Rossouw and Joe van Niekerk would get to take on their countrymen and get greater exposure on South African TV. Who wouldn't want to see Botha up against Eben Etzebeth?8. The Currie Cup could regain its former status. Matches in a European-SA tournament could be scheduled in such a way that SA's top players are available for the majority of the Currie Cup. It would then become a tournament really worth winning again, instead of a glorified Vodacom Cup that is all about player development.