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Pardon my French-Canadian but B0ll0cks to that!
English Premier league winners in last 20 years:
Manchester Utd
Manchester City
Chelsea
Arsenal
Blackburn
20 years, 5 teams.
When money starts to centralise, then the competition becomes stunted.
If you want to run it like the NFL, then OK, thats different, but that is something akin to how the unions run it now. [NFL - 12 winners in 20 years if I have it right]
Not to mention that fact this is the English Premier League, and if you look at the players in those top four or five teams, its a game of "Spot the Englishman"
Full privatisation of domestic rugby competitions would be an utter disaster for the game. This is what Kerry Packer tried to do with his World Rugby Circus back in 1995. Thank God men like the late Jock Hobbs were able to put a stop to it.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/sport/6569056/Jock-Hobbs-greatest-contribution-came-off-field
[TEXTAREA]A lawyer, he then devoted his energies to his family and career, but his links to rugby remained and he became a New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) councillor in 1995, emerging as a crucial figure in defusing the rift that had developed between players and the NZRU when rugby went professional.
The defection of New Zealand's top players to the Kerry Packer-backed World Rugby Corporation was considered a done deal until Hobbs, still a fledgling administrator, worked around the clock for six weeks to secure the key players' signatures for the NZRU.
He was lauded as "the man who saved rugby" after persuading All Blacks poised to join a breakaway professional circus to return to the NZRU fold[/TEXTAREA]
The NZRU, and Australia were able to get the signatures of their players and its the reason why, in this professional era, they have always been centrally contracted to their National Unions.
The RFU and FFR were too late, or didn't even try, and that is why their clubs ended up being privately owned. Nearly 20 years later, it is finally dawning on them what a big mistake that was.
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