Nick Cain’s column: Such double standards wreck PRL credibility

When it comes to putting on a show of home-town partisan support there is no club, or province, in England, Ireland, Wales or Scotland that can live with the pulsating atmosphere generated by French sides like Clermont and Toulon.
Yet, when those teams meet at Twickenham on Saturday in the first European Champions Cup final – the successor to the Heineken Cup – they will do so in the stadium largely devoid of the storm of passion that their fans whip up.
That is a travesty given how much that winning the European crown means to both teams. For Clermont, the side from the Massif Central who painted last weekend’s semi-final against Saracens at the Stade Geoffroy-Guichard in vivid shades of yellow and blue with 40,000 of their raucous fans invading the nearby football stronghold of Saint Etienne, it is the chance to become kings of Europe for the first time.
The stakes are equally high for title holders Toulon, the team from the French naval port where their adoring fans traditionally form a human corridor for the team from their arrival by coach to the entrance of the changing rooms at their Stade Mayol stronghold.
It is their chance to rewrite the record books. Toulon are on the brink of becoming the first side to win the European champions title for three seasons in succession, having beaten Clermont 16-15 in Dublin in 2013 to win it for the first time, and then retained the crown by beating Saracens 23-6 in Cardiff last season.
However, where half of Toulon would have made the trek to a final in Paris to bellow out their ‘Pilou! Pilou!’ spoof on the haka to the ‘Jaunards’ (Yellows) of Clermont, supporters from both these French rugby hotbeds are expected to number fewer than 7,000 at the 82,000-capacity Twickenham.
The cost of cross-Channel transport, accommodation, and tickets to the big match in London is prohibitively expensive for the majority of their fans, and, as a consequence, Twickenham is likely to be little more than half full.
This raises a number of questions for the organisers of the new European Champions Cup in the wake of last year’s successful Anglo-French bid to reorganise the tournament. The first, and most pressing of these, is why is it in London when no English club has won the trophy for seven years?
There have been only three English finalists since Wasps won the only all-English final against Leicester at Twickenham in 2007, and none of them have been winners. By contrast, there have been six French finalists over the same period, and French clubs have won the trophy three times.
That form book would have suggested to most astute planners that Paris would be a safer bet for the inaugural European Champions Cup final than London, especially as the French capital has not hosted a final for five years. It was a significant error of judgement, and not the best start for the new EPCR executive committee of Bruce Craig (PRL), René Fontes (LNR), Paul McNaughton (IRFU/Pro 12) and Jacques Pineau (EPCR director-general).
This week acting chairman McNaughton tried to calm the troubled waters. He said that Twickenham had been picked to host the final after a tendering process, and that the venue could not be changed at late notice for a stadium in France due to the pre-selling of 30,000 tickets for what he hoped would be a 50,000 crowd. He also revealed that next season’s final would be played a fortnight later (May 13/14) to avoid the quarter-finals and semi-finals being on top of each other.
Understandably, McNaughton accentuated the positives, which included increased revenue and the heightened competitiveness of the tournament.
He said: “The target in the first year of sponsorship is to have €20m going to each league (Premiership, Top14, Pro12). There is the minimum €20m guarantee to the Pro 12 in 2014-15, and the English clubs will (also) make more. The overall payment to the three leagues is up, with broadcast and sponsorship significantly increased, and also Heineken in place again as sponsors.”
McNaughton said that progress was also being made to attract four or five leading sponsors for next season, stating: “Our major deadline will be the start of the tournament in November 2015…and we expect to have sponsors on board by the start of next year.”
He continued: “The new format has proved to be extremely competitive, and it is virtually unheard of that in the pool stages there was only one team through to the last eight before the final round of matches. The quarter-finals and semi-finals have also been hugely competitive.”
McNaughton chose not to mention that, from an English perspective, there is a double standard at work in PRL’s stance on fair competition. While Bath owner Craig and others within the Premiership objected strongly – and justifiably – to a Heineken Cup system in which the Celtic/Italian Pro12 teams did not have to qualify through a top six or seven finish in a meritocratic league table as they did, they now openly endorse non-competitive restrictions in their own domestic league.
Where they argued vehemently against Pro12 teams having an automatic right to qualify for the Heineken Cup when French and English teams had to finish in the top half of their tables to qualify, they are now proposing an automatic right to remain in the English top league by suggesting a five-year period without promotion and relegation.
If the Premiership clubs are to gain credibility as captains of Europe’s flagship event they need statesmen at the helm, not the sort of selective, self-serving myopia shown currently by PRL’s policy makers.
*TOULON v CLERMONT EUROPEAN CUP FINAL TICKETS are on general sale from the RFU Ticket Office, and Discounts are available for groups of 10+. Call the RFU Ticket Office on 0871 222 2017.