7s and Rugby League

Do 7s and rugby league provide any challenges for Rugby’s future?  Definitely.  7s inclusion in the Olympics has to be seen as a positive for the proper version of the game, even if only 5% of the people who get drawn into 7s move on to 15s Rugby is in need of every boost possible outside its traditional base of 10 or so countries.  But there are some worries that come with this as well.  Sport Canada (their version of Sport England) has stopped “carding”, essentially government funding, for tight 5 forwards, in America there is a similar worry that the traditional college path ways will become blocked or clogged up with the big colleges focusing on the shorter version of the game.  The last thing 15s need is to lose reasonably strong countries like Canada.  But then Russia seems to be using 7s inclusion to drive standards and interest in the 15s game.

Rugby League also provides a challenge, as make no mistake, they will try and piggy back on the Olympic Inclusion just as much as Rugby proper.  That might not be a problem in established countries, even ones with heavy League history like England or Australia, but in countries where neither code is particularly popular League is as likely as Rugby to take advantage.  Beyond 7s though does League provide any challenges to Rugby?  The weakness of northern English clubs due to the defection almost 120 years ago is an ongoing challenge but that shows no signs of getting worse. 

Rugby's Future Challenges: Championing the Championship

For the Premiership to grow stronger the Championship must grow stronger.  Solid foundations and all that.  So what is preventing this and what can be changed to allow the Championship to flourish?  The Championship is a very good division currently with positive attacking rugby to fore and none of the top teams playing a keep-it-safe-kick-it-away style.  Obviously the standard and crowds are lower than the Premiership but not by much amongst the fully professional sides who fight it out at the top of the league.  Its problems come from an almost invisible commercial presence, with no title sponsor, no major broadcasting partner, no central website and no central sponsorships at all.  The clubs can complain that their central RFU bung is lower than the Premierships, but the massive gap is not the £400k gap in the bung but the £2m+ gap in centralised commercial revenue.  Allowing the RFU to own the central rights is a fatal flaw, it will never (and realistically should never) be a priority for anyone at the RFU.  The Championship must seize their own destiny and demand to negotiate their own deals, then actually go out and do it.

But not every problem is their own making.  Premiership Rugby has out up obstacle after obstacle to block progress and hoop after hoop they must jump through.  Some form of entry criteria is certainly needed, playing on a public park with no floodlights would damage the professional brand of the Premiership and is rightly barred, but these criteria need to be achievable and have realistic timeframes.  10,000 person capacity might be reasonable for an established Premiership club but it is needless for a Championship club or a yo-yo club.  With London Welsh blowing a significant hole in the boughs of the Minimum Standards Criteria we may see several of the more onerous criteria relaxed to encourage clubs to develop their own ground.  Not surprisingly Football leads the way with administrive issues (having the 90 year advantage that it does), a brief summary of their system is that there are 3 types of criteria: Qualification, Admission and Membership.  Qualification is the absolute minimum to be allowed into the league, Admission criteria are need to remain in the league after 1 year and Membership Criteria are needed to remain in the league after 3 years.  If the Championships Membership Criteria were the same as the Premiership’s Qualification Criteria any Championship club which has been in the league for 3 years would automatically be eligible for promotion but would not have to further improve their ground unless they went on to establish themselves in the Premiership. 

As alluded to above this would require the championship to impose its own minimum standards on potential members.  That might be politically unpopular but if the Championship wants to be a second professional division then it must demand certain standards of its members.  For instances Bedford’s floodlight replacement appeal was for £75k, as Championship rugby costs approximately £1m a year in on field costs alone requiring a club to invest £75k in floodlights, which enable rearranged mid week games and evening kick offs in winter, shouldn’t be an insurmountable problem for serious contenders.  Every fan whether you are from Leicester or Wharfedale deserves good facilities to follow their team, so minimum standards across all National Divisions should become common place.

However it is not just Minimum Standards where Premiership Rugby could improve its treatment of Championship clubs, the thorny issue of Promotion and Relegation often rears its ugly head, usually by the fans of whoever happens to be bottom in March, Rugby Matters is staunchly and forever in favour of Promotion and Relegation.  In fact given the quality of the second tier RM proposes that the top tier returns to 2 up 2 down which it abandoned in 1999, a true meritocracy of clubs drives up standards on the pitch as we saw during the 90’s and also allows more clubs access to the oxygen of publicity that the Premiership provides.

But some people will say there just isn’t a market for a second professional league within England, RM struggles to countenance that idea.  Bristol had 8,000 people attend a game this season and had a higher attendance at the Memorial Ground than Saracens did at Vicarage Road.  RM believes this shows that given access to the top flight, its publicity machine and a good stadium many clubs could achieve these sorts of figures.  If Bedford had a ground fit for purpose what attendances could they get?  Newcastle will be an instructive lesson, if they keep their crowd there will be considerable evidence that Championship rugby does not harm your attendances unduly even in what can be considered an outpost of the sport.  Harlequins kept their support as did Northampton and Worcester. 

For the Championship to progress and challenge ProD2 as the best second tier in Europe it must seize its destiny from the RFU and convince the Premiership of its worth.  Then we can start worrying about how to improve the third division!

Rugby's Future Challenges: West Midlands Sleeping Giant?

Coventry were relegated from the championship 2 years ago, Birmingham & Solihull have suffered successive relegations whilst Stourbridge have also suffered relegation to the fourth tier for the first time in 10 years this summer.  Meanwhile Dudley Kingswinford and the now stricken Rugby Lions gained promotion to the self same 4^th division to join Bromsgrove.  This leaves the wider West Midlands with one championship side and one National League 1 side.  Birmingham is the second largest city in the UK but is currently a top level rugby desert, the claim that Worcester is representative of Birmingham is misleading Worcester is closer to Gloucester than it is Birmingham.  Nobody previously claimed Worcester could do without a side because Gloucester had one.  This is definitely a problem as opposed to a challenge, a club in Birmingham or the greater West Midlands would help the league commercially by accessing a large potential fan and sponsor pool as well as giving current sponsors better representation in the country’s second city and helping to grow Rugby as a major force in the way Sale have done in Manchester.

Moseley and Coventry are the only sides historically strong enough to represent the region on a national scale; so unsurprisingly it is upon these two club’s shoulders that realistic hope for the future depends.  Both have ambitious future plans but how realistic these are remains to be seen, Coventry certainly has the quality of local rugby to sustain a top Championship club if not a Premiership club and Birmingham certainly has the commercial fire power to back a Premiership side.  However both of these clubs are a long way from the Premiership, with Moseley staring a relegation battle to remain in the Championship never mind push for promotion. 

What are the prospects for them?  Coventry has announced an ambitious plan to grow their income and improve their side thus growing their income again.  This sounds simple when written like this but as they acknowledge that is far from the case, Bedford is their ideal model for now: healthy crowds, young hungry players supplemented with a few senior players living within their means.  Moseley has planning permission for a large grandstand that would make promotion an achievable goal presuming some Ground Criteria are retained.  A sort of Sale+ is their ideal solution, growing in a larger and more crowded market place is tough and will certainly take an investor willing to sink a few millions in, this is hardly an ideal situation but it hasn’t harmed Sale too much and if Moseley retained their own ground then they may become more like Northampton but with access to a far larger population.

Rugby's Future Challenges: Heineken Cup and Cross Border Competition

Martyn Thomas has been stirring the pots on this subject again as the various interested people discuss and decide how any cross border competitions will look in the future.  His rather foolish view that the Celts can simply say “Shan’t!” and stop all progress or change is far too stupid to waste any more breath on.  If the French and English clubs decide the current set up of ERC is not in their interest then they won’t play in it, just as the Irish and Scots are free to not play in a new proposed competition.  The Franglais alliance is sure that the current 6 way financial split is inequitable as they provide half the teams but only get 1/3^rd of the rewards; this means an English club gets 1.4% of the total compared to 8.3% for a Scottish or Italian team.  With the French clubs having 14 mouths to feed their individual take is more like 1.2%.  The idea that this split is fair, before we consider where this money comes from, is perverse.  The English and French TV markets are overwhelmingly larger than the other 4 countries.   A change to an equal split per club seems a far fairer way to distribute the centrally generated income.  It is only greed and spite that makes the Celtic masses oppose this move.  The times of the English and French subsidising the rest of the club game is over.  If the RFU continue to do so through the 6 Nations that is their business.

The next question is who should qualify?  One camp contends that fair entrance means that the three leagues have equal representation; the other camp maintains that the 4 nations in the Celtic league are still separate entities.  This might be a popular view within those countries but is frankly pathetic.  They made their bed and now they must lie in it, Munster and Cardiff are as intertwined as Leicester and Exeter.  They are one league and do not deserve 10 qualification places, 4 of which are automatic, leaving 8 sides to fight over the remaining 6 spots.  People might cite Edinburgh but London Irish and Saracens both failed to appear in the Heineken Cup the season after reaching the semi finals due to their poor league form.  Rugby Matters doesn’t remember the rivers of Scottish tears for their plight. 

The idea to cut the top tier of European rugby to 20 teams is not only motivated by the desire to balance out qualification from the three leagues but also as a way to toughen up the Amlin Challenge Cup, the second tier of European Rugby.  Currently there are too many uncompetitive matches where amateur or semi-pro sides from Romania, Spain and Italies Super 10 get thrashed by the fully pro sides from England and France, plus occasionally Newport or Connacht.  A big consequence of the Scottish and Welsh decisions to murder their club games in the fruitless quest for Heineken Cup success is the drop in numbers and standard in the Amlin Challenge Cup.  These thrashing do nothing to grow the game in Spain or Romania nor do they help the clubs handing out the thrashings.  Strengthening the Amlin Challenge Cup would help cushion the blow when a side misses out on the Heineken Cup, games against Perpignan and Llanelli are far more attractive than games against Rovigo and Gernika.  It is also hoped that a stronger Amlin Cup would be reflected in its commercial value to broadcasters and sponsors, you would think opening up the possibility of Munster, Leinster or any of the Welsh sides would make the broadcasting contract more valuable. 

But what of the likes of Spain or Romania?  Would they just be cut adrift and forgotten about?  Not under the current plan to introduce a third tier aimed at the developing semi pro leagues around Europe.  Limited cross border competitions already exist between clubs in Eastern Europe and Northern Europe such as the Regional Rugby Championship and the North Sea Cup, the plan would see these competitions effectively merge and new nations join the fray too.  The two finalists would then qualify for the next year’s Amlin Challenge Cup.  The exact form of that competition is up for discussion, involving as many countries as possible has to be the prime goal.  Economic snobbery has to be avoided at all costs; the likes of Romania, Georgia, Ukraine and the Baltics are just as important as Portugal, Spain, Germany and Belgium.

Refereeing in the big Heineken Cup games are also a source of controversy.  It is frankly offensive that referees from Wales are considered neutral when they officiate in matches involving Irish or Scottish sides.  They referee these sides regularly and with the vagaries in the laws regular contact with referees is a significant advantage.  Neutral refereeing is about far more than what country a person was born in, nobody would suggest Northumbrian Dave Pearson would favour Exeter just because he was English any more than they would suggest he would favour Sale just because they are northern.  It is about the referees becoming more accustomed to one side than the other, so that that side knew where the referee’s blind spots are.  See Leinster’s ruthless exploitation of Nigel Owens’s weakness at penalising interference with a line out jumper.  This is another issue that should have been sorted out when the Celtic league was formed, rather than be left to fester as a source of resentment. 

The timings of the tournament have also come in for criticism; taking out the prime attendance weekend of Easter from the domestic schedule is a long time compliant, as are the semis and final taking prime weekends at the end of the season.  A move for the Heineken Cup or a successor to September should free up the end of the season for domestic matters as well as the prime Easter weekend.

But these aren’t the only cross border competitions we also have the British & Irish Cup competed for by second tier sides in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland as well as the Anglo-Welsh Cup, which is pretty self explanatory.  The B&I Cup has had a strange existence so far with the Irish using it as a proving ground for young talent and fringes players whilst the English primarily wanted it for the extra games.  With the Championship being shrunk to 12 teams there is a definite need for more games amongst the English second tier clubs, and the B&I Cup has stepped into the breach.  The Anglo-Welsh Cup was also initially brought about as a revenue generator, it apparently still fulfils this function even in it’s somewhat emasculated recent format. 

So what is the future of cross border competitions?  The 2015 season could become a watershed for cross border competitions, it is hard to work out how the Aviva Premiership can be fit in after the World Cup, thanks to the IRBs cowardly compromise over the final date, without playing the Anglo-Welsh mid week, playing all through the 6 Nations and shortening the proposed Australia tour to one or two test matches, let alone the how Orange Top 14 in France will be organised.  There is a significant chance of no European competition that season.  Beyond that all Rugby Matters is sure about is that the Heineken Cup under its current format will not last.  Too much propping up of the Celtic fringe and too much interference with the domestic calendar.

Rugby's Future Challenges: London Domination of Semi-Pro Rugby

This is certainly a good challenge rather than a bad one.  London and its suburbs have really upped their game with the off the field inducements they are able to offer, such as jobs in The City, the wages they are able to afford and access to loan players from the 4 RFU funded Premiership academies.  6 teams, of 16, in the third division are from London or a suburb.  The only problem with this is that they aren’t generating the fan interest that they should because of the close proximity to even better quality of rugby.  The challenge for the provinces is how they respond to these advances; the challenge for rugby generally is what the consequences are if they fail?

The problem is not so much the domination of London & the South East v the other 3 RFU regions, it is the domination of London within the South East region, and West London at that.  Areas such as Hampshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Sussex and Essex are badly underrepresented in the national leagues as progress through National 2 South and National 3 SE is made difficult by the impressive London sides.  Blackheath are the only East London of the top 12 London sides, with 9 from West London and 2 from North London. 

What, if any, are the consequences of this?  Are these clubs blocking comparatively popular provincial clubs?  Well no is the brutal answer.  The attendances at the lower levels of rugby are much of a muchness, Leicestershire having much lower attendances than competitors and Cornwall have much higher attendances, generally clubs from division 3 downwards attract 800 fans max and the only exceptions are comatose giant Coventry and captive audiences in the Channel Islands.  Are they driving down the standard of rugby in the rest of the country?  Again no, not really.  They are raising the bar rather grabbing all the available talent.  A problem this is arguably creating is the lack of inspiration in other areas, for instance a youngster in Esher for instance gets to watch some truly historic sides in his back garden; this might inspire him to reach those levels whereas a lad in Southampton doesn’t get to see any good rugby locally. 

Is there anything the RFU can or should do?  It could pour resources into selected clubs (much like their “Hot Spots” plan in the North) to try and grow a local “super club” even if that “super club” was only on the scale of Bedford; but would the initial resentment ever be overcome and would a club be prudent with someone else’s money?  And is it really the RFU’s place to be openly and continually favouring one club over all others?  Any justice arguments that club became involved with would immediately become suspect and any club that felt it lost out would have simmering resentment possibly for decades.

Rugby's Future Challenges: Transparency and Instituitional Secrecy

Rugby’s biggest challenge is the complete lack of clarity from the top.  It is the same at both the RFU and PRL.  Absolutely anything and everything is shrouded in as much secrecy as possible; from next season it will get even worse when PRL introduce a “Marquee Player” whose wages are to be outside the Salary Cap, not only are the Salary Cap regulations never fully revealed but clubs will be barred from announcing who their “Marquee Player” is and how much his wages are.  And they don’t seem to realise this will be a cynic’s paradise.  There is some merit to not revealing the player’s wages, who would want their wages publicised?   

But to not even say whose wages are being taken out of the cap is ridiculous.

Another fine example of PRL’s shameful attitude to openness is the issue of Minimum Standards.  The Criteria were kept secret, the auditing of clubs is kept secret and the outcomes of the audits are kept secret.  This has to change; if they are to be retained the criteria should be published openly, after all if the criteria are fair then why hide them away?  And the results of current member’s audit should be published.  The Club 1 situation in London Welsh's appeal is disgraceful, not only did an unnamed club lose a vital 'A' criteria nobody knows when this even occurred!.  Releasing the punishments of current members will do wonders to decrease the cynicism towards the rules and PRL.  Rules must be seen to be enforced, or people will naturally assume they aren’t being followed.

The RFU’s smoky back rooms and power plays are no better.  Far too much power is held by barely accountable county buffers, how Welsh farmer Martyn Thomas ever managed to scheme his way into power is beyond me.  The RFU should abolish all county interference in the running of the national and international game.  Most of these buffers are well meaning amateurs but the opportunity for shysters to wield power is unacceptable. 

The RFU are actually the leaders in openness with Judge Jeff Blackett forcing through the open publishing of all disciplinary reports.  What is good for the goose is good for the gander; all RFU reports should be published openly for scrutiny.

Overall we need a fundamental paradigm shift in attitudes towards transparency and secrecy.  We need to show their is nothing to hide.  Sunlight is the best disinfectant.