Rugby union's brave new world

[snoopy snoopy dog dog]

Below is an excellent article by Robert Kitson from the Guardian online concerning the future of rugby. It touches on many areas where the game is headed over the next few years. It's well worth a read.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/apr/02/rugby-union-new-world-sevens-rio

Professional rugby union will shortly celebrate its 15th birthday and still suffers from teenage angst. Insiders agree on only one thing: the future is unclear. The six years up to the Rio Olympics in 2016 could see the emergence of a sleeker, re-energised sport – strong-jawed, thunderous and commercially vibrant – or, just as easily, a painful contraction in the game's traditional heartlands.


There have been significant recent developments: Olympic recognition for sevens at the Rio Games, Carl Hayman's decision to reject a World Cup place in the All Black front row for a mega-deal with Toulon, emergency measures to spice up the English Premiership, the announcement of major funding to help Argentina bring Latin colour to the Tri Nations and dire warnings about the financial health of the club game. The Guardian has canvassed a number of leading rugby figures to discover what else lies in store ...
Broken dreams

English club rugby will not look the way it does now. "The reality is that the Championship is virtually bankrupt and the professional clubs are, collectively, shouldering losses of around £25m," warns Edward Griffiths, the Saracens chief executive. "That structure for the professional club game is simply not sustainable. Something has to change. At some stage, the RFU and the clubs have to find a way to work more effectively together and not appear to be rivals competing for the same market. We need to create a common interest in English rugby between the clubs and the union."


In Griffiths's view, that will ultimately spell the end of promotion and relegation to and from the Premiership, and the Championship winners are already hamstrung by the new play-off system that effectively delays recruitment until May. "A club like Bristol face a completely intolerable situation if they get promoted," continues Griffiths. "Cecil Duckworth has done an unbelievable job in building Worcester up, yet now he could get relegated. The next Cecil Duckworth is going to think twice about investing in the game."


The solution, according to Griffiths, is joint-owned franchises. "The clubs become professional franchises in which the RFU has a stake, while the franchises in turn have a stake in the RFU. The fault line in the game is the ongoing conflict between the RFU and the clubs."
The numbers game

Following the agreement to expand the Magners League to 12 teams, tentative plans exist to increase the size of the Premiership to 14 clubs from 2013. "If that happens in the build-up to a World Cup in England in 2015 you can begin to see a pathway for professional club rugby," argues Mark McCafferty, Premier Rugby Limited's chief executive. He also hopes average Premiership crowds (currently 13,608) will eclipse football's Championship (currently averaging 16,677 excluding Newcastle) within five years.


Over at Twickenham, however, the RFU management board chairman, Martyn Thomas, believes the buoyant attendance figures are overly reliant on cut-price tickets and, like Griffiths, senses trouble brewing. "At the outset, the perception of owners like Sir John Hall and Nigel Wray was that they could transform the game through increasing the spectator base and sponsorship. I think they would now agree that hasn't happened. I question whether, as currently structured, the game in this country is sustainable."


Others remain unconvinced that domestic expansion is the answer. "I feel quite strongly that, in the long run, the number of Premiership clubs will reduce," predicts Mark Evans, the Harlequins chief executive. "In the short to medium term it might go the other way but it's a very tough model to make work."
Euro millions?

So what are the alternatives? There is already a cross-border league, with two Italian sides due to join the Magners League party. "I think it's been interesting to see the growth of the Magners League over the last 12 months," Damian Hopley, the chief executive of the Rugby Players' Association, says. "They've really got their act together, despite the superstars not playing all the time. They've got an excellent model there."


Next stop would be a European Super League, although maybe not for a decade or more. "There's a great opportunity to have a 16-team European competition played over 20-odd weeks but the French would resist it and without them it can't happen," Evans says.


But where would that leave the domestic leagues? "Does the European competition get bigger and you then go for a more streamlined domestic competition that fits in better with the Six Nations?" Sir Ian McGeechan asks rhetorically. "There has to be a balance so we don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg, namely the player." It is McGeechan's view that the 2011-12 season would be an ideal time to experiment. "The World Cup season has to look different and I'd like to think a Lions season has to as well."


A world club challenge involving the Heineken Cup champions and the winners of what is becoming the Super 15 is also pencilled in for 2012, but everyone has to accept that, in future, less is more. "That's a drum we've been banging for a long time," Hopley says. "We have virtually followed the NFL in terms of the collision nature of the game and they play a 16-game regular season with play-offs." Fewer matches of higher quality staged in bigger arenas is the way forward.
That's entertainment

There is a growing realisation that dishing up dull rugby every week is for dinosaurs. The Premiership's recent move to perk up their product recalled the words of John O'Neill, Australia's chief executive, back in February: "We're in the mass entertainment business."


Few in the north were sympathetic but many are changing their tune. "It was a significant concern and we felt we needed to address it," acknowledged McCafferty, faced with a 38% drop in Premiership tries this season. An International Rugby Board global conference on the game on 13-14 May will reflect that unease and, once the 2011 World Cup is over, there will be renewed attempts to encourage attacking rugby and reduce aimless kicking.


Longer term, expect rolling subs in Tests and a reduced hit at the scrum. Brace yourself, too, for the value of a try to be increased and for penalty shots at goal to be made illegal from inside a kicker's own half.


Player welfare will become ever more important, too. "I have concerns about the damage players are suffering," Thomas admits. "When you see old internationals from the amateur era a lot of them are hobbling around on walking sticks. I worry for young guys in the future with the increasing size of the hits. I've always said to the IRB that we need to look at issues like padding, which make people feel they're super and invulnerable."


Olympic recognition, though, will benefit those deemed too lightweight to thrive at Test level. "I've no doubt you'll have people choosing between 15s and sevens as a career," Hopley predicts.
New breed of globe-trotters

This will also be the decade of the wandering minstrel. "It's a little bit prehistoric for national unions to put restrictions on their players," argues Mark Bakewell, part of the coaching team who are about to welcome Gareth Delve and Danny Cipriani to the Melbourne Rebels. "Rugby would benefit worldwide if a freer flow of players was allowed. In this day and age, you would have thought it would be advantageous for Carl Hayman to play for Toulon and then play for the All Blacks in the World Cup." Maybe.


With the Olympics being staged in Rio in 2016 and a World Cup scheduled for Japan in 2019, horizons are broadening. The IRB, already optimistic about rising standards in Russia, China and the US on the back of significant Olympic funding, are also targeting non-rugby strongholds such as India, Mexico and Brazil for major investment.


"Sometimes we're so close to it that we can't see the progress we've made," Hopley stresses. "The game's unrecognisable from what it was even eight years ago."


Russia v China in a Rugby World Cup quarter-final? It'll happen one day, probably sooner than we think.

Perhaps I should sue for plagiarism since I posted a few topics with my thoughts on many of the subjects raised in the article on these forums!


Any opinions on the article?

 

[Feicarsinn]

Fairly damming of the professional game in England and a bit Anglo centred. The idea of a European Super league for example: I wouldn't want it, the French wouldn't want it and there's a good chance many of the Welsh and Scottish members wouldn't want it. It would serve the English game more than anyone else and would spell an end for the Heineken Cup, in my opinion the best club competition in the world, not to mention the damage it would do to the ML and Top 14. The assumtion that the Celtic franchises would be willing to jump straight into bed with the English clubs is a bit odd, after at the moment we're a good bit better.

I know that the author obviously representitive of the opinions of many of our English members before you guys all get on my back. Bit doom and gloom all the same, is'nt it?

 

[snoopy snoopy dog dog]

A lot of the points such as depowering the hit in the scrum and rolling subs are inevitable.

Nobody wants to see scrums constantly collapse and take two minutes off the clock. The options at professional level are to stop the clock from the point the scrum is awarded until the point where the ball is picked up from the base of the scrum or to find a way of depowering the hit. Sequential engagement is the most obvious way (front rows bind first, then 2nd rows tag on followed by back rows) without going for the rugby league option of non-contested scrums.

Rollings subs is already being trialled so it's a no-brainer that it'll come into the game. Hopefully the number of subs will be limited, much like in RL and not like the NFL or NHL model.

In the next decade I see the Sevens series significantly increasing the number of tournaments to between 16 nd 20 annually. Olympic inclusion suddenly makes it a sexier sport - what price of mainland China or Japan for example bidding to host a round of the annual series?

Something which wasn't touched on is expanding the 15s World Cup which I suspect will happen in time for the 2019 edition in Japan. I think there'll be 24 teams in that competition. The reason I believe this is that it makes it more likely that other countries like Germany, Spain, Brazil and Korea will qualify. The difference between the teams ranked 16-24 in the world isn't too big so it would offer scope for the weaker nations to win a game. There would be mismatches when tier 1 countries face the weaker qualifiers but The IRB would support expansion to help expand TV revenue in potentially big markets - it's the same reason that FIFA have expanded their World Cup.

Fairly damming of the professional game in England and a bit Anglo centred. The idea of a European Super league for example: I wouldn't want it, the French wouldn't want it and there's a good chance many of the Welsh and Scottish members wouldn't want it. It would serve the English game more than anyone else and would spell an end for the Heineken Cup, in my opinion the best club competition in the world, not to mention the damage it would do to the ML and Top 14. The assumtion that the Celtic franchises would be willing to jump straight into bed with the English clubs is a bit odd, after at the moment we're a good bit better.

I know that the author obviously representitive of the opinions of many of our English members before you guys all get on my back. Bit doom and gloom all the same, is'nt it?

I don't think it's doom and gloom at all. The article is trying to get to the root of problems facing the game and finding ways to get around them.

Take the European Super League for example. In my opinion it's inevitable that this will happen and domestic leagues will be disbanded. The wheels have already been set in motion. Two years ago it was reported that a TV company (suspcted to have beenSetanta) sought out discussions between the RFU, FFR and IRFU to set up a competition between clubs from those nations - this was at the time when Top 14 clubs were expelled from the Heineken Cup. What's to stop such discussions becoming serious in future?

The Magners League provides the largest number of participants to the Heineken Cup yet the TV market is smaller than in France of England. That's proved to be a flashpoint in the past and will continue to be. The immediate solution is to disband the Amlin Cup and increase the size of the Heineken Cup to 32 teams thus allowing most English and French top division teams in.....

......If virtually all top division teams in England, France, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Italy play in the same competition, what's the point of domestic leagues any more? The Heineken Cup will thus expand the group phase to 20 or so games and have a large playoffs of 12 or more teams. TV is happy because they get a new competition where every game means something and thus they'll pay big money for the rights. Clubs are happy because there are now fewer games but they're of a higher intensity - more people come through the gates. The IRB are happy because it reduces fixture congestion. Expansion is possible into new markets. We could easily see a German, Spanish, Belgian or Russian team (for example) buy their way into the tournament - teams from those countries entering the Heineken Cup as it's currently configured is impossible.

I believe a European League is essential to help significantly grow the game in Europe. The line which is often trotted out is that the French will never have it. I completely disagree. In the last decade France's top division has done this:
16 teams split into two pools changed to

16 teams playing each other twice followed by 4 team playoffs with the top seeds having home advantage changed to

14 teams playing each other twice followed by 4 team playoffs with the top seeds having home advantage changed to

14 teams playing each other twice followed by 4 team playoffs with semi finals held in neutral venues changed to

14 teams playing each other twice followed by 6 team playoffs with semi finals held in neutral venues

There are also calls to reduce the Top 14 to the Top 12. France isn't afraid of change - money will dictate to them that Europe is the way to go. France was behind the creation of FIRA-AER and supported Italian and Romanian inclusion into the 5 Nations. France is the most forward thinking of all rugby nations.

Mark Evan's assertion that "there's a great opportunity to have a 16-team European competition played over 20-odd weeks" is a non-runner though since it excludes far too many teams and makes the top clubs too powerful. Nobody wants a situation like football where the Champions League is arguably the best competition on the planet (in terms of quality).

Fewer matches of higher quality staged in bigger arenas is the way forward is a line I fully agree with. Who really wants to see Leinster play Ospreys (for example) up to 6 times a season? That's entirely possible as the leagues are currently configured (they could play twice in the ML, twice in the HC pools and once each in the ML and HC knockout stages). Soon anomalies like that will turn people off - just look at the Tri Nations for an example of familiarity breeding contempt among TV viewers.