Nick Cain: McCafferty cannot be allowed to cage Lions

Mark McCafferty is making a serious mistake in trying to push the Lions into a five-week cage while, at the same time, attempting to extend the Premiership season to 11 months. The chief executive of Premiership Rugby is an experienced administrator, and the recipient of a salary believed to be upwards of £450,000 a year, but the new order he is pushing is an almighty mess.
A legion of Premiership players have voiced their opposition to an 11-month season due to the dangers to player welfare, and have even threatened strike action. What McCafferty should ask is why their welfare is any less important than that of players in the Southern Hemisphere, who will play only nine months of the year?
McCafferty’s model for an extended season which shoehorns the Lions, one of sport’s biggest draw cards, into a tiny cell is interfering unnecessarily with one of Rugby Union’s great institutions. It is one which is not broke, and does not need fixing – so why tinker with a shop window event like a Lions tour which attracts a unique following of 30,000 fans whenever they travel south.
A Lions tour is clearly one that supporters of the game in the Home Unions cherish, so why reduce it to eight games in five weeks  rather than the current ten games in six weeks – especially as it happens only once every four years? Even more scandalously, why make no provision at all in your 11-month season for a preparation window before the tour, something Lions coaches have been calling for over the last 25 years?
It is extraordinary that the RFU have refused to apply the brakes to McCafferty’s Premiership power-play, with their chief executive, Iain Ritchie – who is also a member of the Lions board – giving it the green light.
This is offering McCafferty a free hand to push through a structure that appears seriously flawed when you look outside the Premiership and the European Cup, which for the moment work well as bedrock competitions for the elite club game.
However, altering them to stretch over an 11-month window could jeopardise a successful formula, because just as there is player fatigue, there can also be spectator fatigue if competitions become too convoluted. All McCafferty and company need do is look at Super Rugby‘s steep downward slide in spectator appeal if they need a reminder of the damage that can be done by constant tinkering.
In professional sport less is often more. It is the quality of competitions that count, not the quantity. That is why the Lions are an enduring success.
McCafferty has had plenty of time to think about improved competition structures in his 12-year tenure at Premiership Rugby. Yet, he presides over an Anglo Welsh competition that is semi-competitive at best, with a poor formula which does not engage rugby supporters – and is now having trouble attracting sponsorship.
Meanwhile, despite paying lip service this week to the need for promotion and relegation, McCafferty has done little to improve the financial support for Championship clubs, or to engage them in a revamped Anglo Welsh competition.
English and Welsh rugby clubs below the Premiership and Pro 12 are crying out for meaningful competitions. However, instead of giving Championship clubs a chance to pitch against Premiership A teams in a competition which might renew ancient rivalries, McCafferty is looking to South Africa and talking about Currie Cup teams entering the mix.
I can understand a play-off final between the winners of the Anglo Welsh and the Currie Cup, or even a mini knock-out cup competition involving the four semi-finalists from each tournament. But the idea of shipping in Currie Cup teams with no travelling support to play in a second-tier competition with a dodgy format has Super Rugby cock-up written all over it.
McCafferty and his Premiership Rugby back office have to come up with something more inspired than this.
Otherwise, you can only conclude that their influence on the game is becoming totally disproportionate.