What future for European rugby?

The Heineken Cup is the best competition in the world. I can hear the Southern Hemisphere followers saying ‘but what about…’ and rightly so. Stylistically the game could be more attractive at the top level for SANZAR nations but I am taking wider aspects into account.

This includes the widely different cultures you can experience in the Heineken Cup. The vocal Welford Road to the partisan Stade Mayol. The suburban trappings of the Stoop to the harsh winds and winters of Ravenhill. It sounds like an episode of ‘Game of Thrones’ for Christ’s sake.

I’ve gone to two away games in the Heineken Cup, both of them being wonderful experiences. I went to see Saracens at the Stade Colombes is Paris when they beat Racing Metro in blizzard conditions. This was easily the most atmospheric and fun rugby match I have ever been to. The mulled wine was flowing, the snow blowers were clearing the lines while play was going on in a desperate but successful attempt to keep the game going. Magical stuff.

Wind Street, Swansea: A must for the rugby away fan

The second was last season, again watching Saracens beat a lacklustre Ospreys side. It was a game that would live in infamy because of the 101 scrum resets that took place during the game. On our way out, we were verbally abused by some very disgruntled Swansea fans, shouting ‘I hate you English  c*&ts’ and blaming us for building the Severn bridge?! We then had a very trashy but incredibly fun evening hanging out with Paul James and Jacques Burger in the local Revolution Vodka Bar on Wind Street.

Now I'm not overly bothered about this new TV deal debate raging between BT/The RFU/ERC and Premier Rugby about rights to show European matches. Ultimately it’s the fans who will suffer as we’ll have to fork out more to watch potentially less rugby as BT may have exclusive rights to all Aviva and European games.

What does concern me is the structure of the tournament. Most importantly how teams qualify. Two questions:

1.       Why on earth do the RaboDirect teams ALL get automatic qualification?

2.       Why has this only just started to annoy me?

Leinster have a big but not abnormally swollen squad of 41. No problem there. Until you look at how many games their key players partook in last year. Jonny Sexton last season played 15 matches in Leinster colours. Saracens star man last season, Owen Farrell played 25. Both enjoyed relatively injury free seasons.

How did Leinster manage to play their best player so little you ask, thus keeping him in peak physical condition? Simple, they don’t play their best team every week.

But how do they expect to win the league? Again, simple, they don’t.

But how do they expect to not get relegated? They don’t have relegation.

Edinburgh finished 2^nd from bottom in last year’s RaboDirect league, sandwiched between Benetton and the now defunct Aironi. However, Edinburgh also finished in the last four of the Heineken Cup. They considered last season a successful one. Ridiculous. Not because they view the H Cup finish as a positive, but because their poor finish in the RaboDirect league does not even enter their consciousness. Why should they care, they know they will definitely have another crack at it next year.

This is my real complaint. Why do the French and English teams have to bust a gut and scramble for a top six place when their Celtic and Italian counterparts have no such pressure? The real reason why some teams want to break the salary cap in the UK is not just to allow their benefactors to chuck loads of money at star signings, but also to acquire a squad big and good enough to compete with the more rested squads from the RaboDirect competition. We have to stand with the French in this argument as they too have relegation even though different clubs seem to have different priorities with some focusing on the Top 14 and others happily viewing the H Cup as the pinnacle of club rugby. These aspirations are usually split along the lines of money. The fact remains though that European Rugby is a significant source of income for all the teams involved, for some this revenue stream is assured, for others it is not, and this puts them at a distinct disadvantage.

Leinster vs Toulouse - A fixture of the past?

And before Irish, Scottish and Welsh fans start arguing about playing populations and how economics means they can’t support more than a few professional teams so they need automatic qualification, this is elite sport, not a charity. The premier European rugby competition needs these teams from the Celtic and Italian nations, but not at the expense of fairness.  

As if to give validity to the whole argument, along come Zebre. This is the team that has replaced Aironi in the RaboDirect competition. They are an unknown quantity and chucked together when it became clear that Aironi could not financially operate as a club anymore and the Italian RFU decided they wanted more control over their teams. ‘Give them a year in the Amlin’ I thought when I heard of this new side in the competition. That would be the sensible option. Let them have a year to find their feet and look on from there. Boost up a team to the big competition that missed out narrowly on qualifying last season like Stade Francais or London Irish. That would be the right thing to do.

Zebre are in Pool 3 of the Heineken Cup. If this is how European rugby wants to operate, then maybe it can carry on in a competition without the likes of Toulouse and Leicester Tigers. Let’s have a competition between the top French and English sides if they won’t accept a smaller tournament with just the top six RaboDirect qualifying. As much as I loved Swansea, given the choice between the South of Wales or the South of France, there is little debate in this household. Such a competition has a future, the other does not.

And what is the Heineken Cup without the French and English teams? A Celtic League with a couple of Italian sides thrown in and I’m pretty sure we already have one of those. We can work together for a better and fairer European Cup or we can allow this separation of views to become a genuine division that benefits very few.