RFU Move to save Heinken Cup [Article]

Funkstard

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_union/6597469.stm


Members of the Rugby Football Union Council will vote on a resolution on Friday which could help save the future of the Heineken Cup.

A Council member has proposed a motion that would see the Premiership clubs and the RFU have an equal shareholding and voting rights in the tournament.

If the motion is successful, the RFU's own management board would be under presure to accept the club's demands.

The clubs have offered to return the shares if they were to quit the RFU.

As things stand the competition could feature England's National League One clubs if the impasse is not resolved.

But International Rugby Board chairman Syd Millar met with French clubs, who are also set to boycott next season's competition, on Monday, and will hold talks with Premiership representatives on Saturday in an attempt to resolve the issue.

Hopefully thank god! What do you think?

Steffano2002

I think the French and English clubs were right to boycott as by doing this they have them by the balls. I believe they will come to an agreement to "save the H-Cup" and the clubs will be much better off from then on!

Gowan Serge you good thing!

gjim

I think the French and English clubs were right to boycott as by doing this they have them by the balls.

Eh? What's "right" about it? By any definition, it's the opposite of "right" - having someone by the balls and f*cking them over. It's not good for any of the fans, it's not good for any of the players, it's not good for the general development of the game and it's not good for the competition itself. The only people it might be good for are a small number of money men in England and France and even then I think they've seriously overplayed their hands.

The English and French clubs have delusions of grandeur. They've been pouring money into the club game in England for the last 10 years fantasising that they can make rugby like premiership soccer - 30 home games a year with crowds of 35,000 plus per game and effective control over the entire sport having demoting the international game. The sad reality is that the average attendance at a Top 14 game is under 12,000 which is similar to that in the premiership and that the money and popular interest in rugby still lies with the international game. The only people "they" have by the balls are the relatively small number of European rugby fans while simultaneously shooting themselves in the foot.

Snickers Man

Steffano2002 wrote:

Gowan Serge you good thing!

Qui a mangé toutes lest tartines?

siochain

gjim wrote:

Eh? What's "right" about it? By any definition, it's the opposite of "right" - having someone by the balls and f*cking them over.

QUOTE]

fully agree

psicic

It's ironic that the H-cup started off with a bad show by the Unions (SRU and RFU) preventing clubs from playing back in '95. :rolleyes:

As for the English, this is probably good news. On the one hand, part of what the clubs are looking for seems reasonable - and I'll always like the idea of expansion of the cup. On the other hand, individual clubs are doing what they've tried and fail to do for upwards of ten years and throw their weight and pocketbooks around, making rash promises about this 'glorious new era' they can offer the game without any specifics. Think the RFU will have to 'take one for the team' this time around...but hope to God they start a proper restructuring programme to prevent this sort of thing happening again.

As for the French - to be honest I'd prefer to have second tier French sides at this stage. If tier 1 teams want to believe they are unjustly subsidising foreign teams then fine...don't play....don't get the revenue from matches with these foreign teams. If the domestic club game is the be-all-and-end-all then we need to ditch the clubs with this attitude from the competition. Central contracting in return for 'development grants'.

It'll devalue the cup in the short term, but, hell, bring in the Romanians and the Spanish. They're okay. Shoot, bus up some Boks and make it interesting.

I never really took the time to read about the French position until today. Now I see why so many people are reacting so negatively to their 'issues'. Whereas the English clubs are acting out of a businessman's greed to expand, the French seem to be acting up demanding a recognition of their superior worth to the cup - I know which position is more palatable for me at least.

Jilm

Story here

A new RFU proposal will this week restore the top English clubs to Europe’s premier tournament

THE leading English and French clubs will call off their boycott of the Heineken Cup this week and remove the threat to the future of the top event in European club rugby. Next season’s event will take place with the Guinness Premiership and Top 14 clubs participating and, barring any last-minute hitches, a new five-year deal governing the event is ready to be signed as early as this Tuesday.

Dates for next season’s pool games have been set and the 2008 final will be held at the Millennium stadium in Cardiff. “If nobody messes with the agreement, I think we are there,” a senior union figure involved in negotiations said yesterday.

The new impetus has come from talks over the past few days in Dublin led by the International Rugby Board (IRB), the sport’s global governing body, but chiefly from a Rugby Football Union (RFU) move in which it has promised, in a “memorandum of understanding” signed by Syd Millar, the IRB chairman, Martyn Thomas, the RFU chairman, and Tom Walkinshaw, the chairman of Premier Rugby (PRL), which represents the English clubs, that the RFU will always enter English club teams in European events, and that those clubs will always be based on a meritocracy – in other words, that they will always be the clubs finishing at the top of the Guinness Premiership.

This calms what has been for more than a decade the overwhelming fear held by the English professional clubs: that the RFU would seek to usurp the growing power of the club game by entering divisional or other conglomerate teams in major events. None of this was specifically ruled out in the RFU’s recent Way Forward document, which addressed the future of the game. Until recently the RFU had been prepared to concede only that clubs will be entered in Europe until the end of the Long Form Agreement between the union and PRL, in two years’ time.

Now there is a legally enforceable agreement that England’s banner will always be carried by the PRL clubs and, in exchange, the PRL is dropping its demand for an equal shareholding in the Heineken Cup with the RFU. This will please the RFU, which insists that the governing body must retain control. “The real issue was never that shareholding,” said one source involved in recent talks. “It was the idea that the RFU could in the future bypass the England clubs totally.”

There will be hopes that the concessions made by both sides will add impetus to new negotiations on domestic issues in England that have bedevilled the sport for a decade, especially the issue of player release for England training sessions. The French clubs are also expected to return. They withdrew in solidarity with the English clubs but also because of issues of scheduling, with the World Cup in France later this year and the lucrative Top 14 domestic league dominating next season.

The relief in all sections of the sport will be massive, not least because efforts to stage a credible event in the absence of the major English and French teams had run into serious problems. A boycott would have been catastrophic. It would have cost the English clubs alone a total of £12m in lost receipts and, quite possibly, led to the bankruptcy of some of the other competing teams from Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Italy. The Celtic nations and Italy do not have domestic events of sufficient commercial power to run their domestic rugby profitably. It would also have led to open warfare between the IRB and national unions on one hand, and the independent club sector on the other.

As yet, nobody will dare to express exhilaration at the deal. “I would be optimistic that we can have a new competition with both the English and French clubs participating,” said the RFU’s Thomas yesterday.

Last night there were only two possible checks on euphoria. One was the theory that Serge Blanco, chairman of LNR, the French clubs’ body, is still faced with a logjam of fixtures and that it may be inconvenient for them to participate, although he and Millar have had fruitful talks. The other is late and unexpected opposition of one union grandee, who has surprised the IRB and other negotiators by going cool on aspects of the agreement on the very verge of signing.

spanner

Its unbelivable that this dispute happened in the first place, I know the French have said that their domestic league in more important but the HC is hardly that small and insignificant that they couldnt have tried to reach an agreement before now.

MiCr0

and today

An ERC Shareholders meeting took place in Dublin today (Tuesday, 8 May) with IRB Chairman Dr. Syd Millar, which included representatives from the six Shareholder Unions and representatives from the Club bodies from England (PRL), France (LNR), Italy (LIRE) and Wales (Welsh Regions).

All parties reaffirmed their commitment to the long term future of the Heineken Cup and European Challenge Cup and to providing a stable future for both ERC tournaments.

The parties reached a conditional agreement, which, on completion of discussions between RFU and PRL over the next two weeks, will ensure the long term future of both European tournaments and the participation of the leading teams from all six competing nations. All parties are working towards a final agreement by the weekend of the Heineken Cup Final at Twickenham Stadium on Sunday, 20 May.

It was confirmed that the participant teams will be Club / Provincial / Regional teams from Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and in the case of England, France and Italy, Club teams from the top professional leagues in each country.

In attendance at today's meeting were:
IRB (Dr. Syd Millar & Mike Miller)
ERC (Jean-Pierre Lux & Derek McGrath)
FFR (Pierre Camou, Bernard Lapasset & Michel Palmie)
LNR (Serge Blanco)
FIR (Orazio Arancio)
LIRE (Sandro Manzoni)
IRFU (Peter Boyle & Philip Browne)
RFU (Terry Burwell & Martyn Thomas)
PRL (Mark McCafferty & Tom Walkinshaw)
SRU (George Jack & Allan Munro)
WRU (Roger Lewis)
Welsh Regions (Stuart Gallacher)

Thats fantastic news. Shouldn't have happened in the first place but its great the competition is secure.