ONE of Rugby Union‘s greatest failings is that it often does not recognise the value of what it has until it is too late – and the European Cup could become the latest victim of that malaise.
The way in which Lions tours have been squeezed into an ever-shrinking five-week window despite more travelling support than any event in our sport bar the World Cup is a prime example.
Even that act of vandalism could be trumped by French Rugby Federation president Bernard Laporte’s proposal for a new Club World Cup, which threatens to send the European Cup into oblivion despite its status as a competition which has galvanised club rugby in Europe every year since its inception in 1996.
However, as happens in Rugby Union with infuriating frequency – such as with World Rugby’s abandoned plan for a Nations Championship last year – Laporte’s concept has been announced when it is little more than a figment of his imagination.
It reminds me of a fellow rugby journalist who said that a few notes he had scribbled on a cigarette packet subsequently became the blueprint for the Rugby World Cup. I never paid too much attention to his claim – and I am inclined to do the same with ‘Mad Bernie’s’ blueprint for a Club World Cup.
Laporte, who might be keen to make feelgood factor headlines as he is about to run for election as a vice-chairman of World Rugby – and therefore be in place to succeed Bill Beaumont as their chairman – wants to find six weeks in the annual rugby calendar for his new brainchild.
This consists of 20 of the top clubs in the world – four each from England’s Premiership, France’s Top 14, and the Celtic/Italian/South African Pro14, six from Super Rugby (New Zealand, South Africa, Australia), and the champion clubs of the USA and Japan – playing in a tournament set-up that mimics the World Cup. In other words, four pools of five teams, followed by a knockout stage of quarter-finals, semi-finals, and final.
Hey presto, the answer he has come up with to accommodate the tournament is to scupper the European Cup, which runs over nine weekends, giving him the window he is looking for.
Laporte’s reasoning is difficult to follow. On one hand, he says: “The European competition is magnificent. With Toulon (when I was head coach) I was able to lift the trophy three times, and I know what it can represent.”
On the other hand, Bernie proposes to chuck the baby out with the bathwater: “But let’s be frank, it does not generate enough income. If we want to develop this Club World Cup we have to find dates, and without the (European) Champions Cup nine weekends are available.”
It is true that the European Cup has lost some of the sponsorship revenue it used to attract, and this could be due to a number of factors, most notably the shift to online advertising models in recent years.
However, what Laporte does not mention is that the competition is still attracting live audiences and broadcast figures which put the rest of club rugby across the world in the shade.
Furthermore, if Laporte had a multi-million pound sponsor lined up for his Club World Cup he failed to mention it. Instead, he supplied us with a woolly wish list which contained very little substance.
He said: “The goal of my approach is to find the income that will allow unions to finance both the professional and amateur world. This (coronavirus) crisis must push us to be innovative. Let’s make this new competition. I am sure that the public and television will follow.”
Laporte will have to come up with a much better map than that to persuade anyone to abandon what is unquestionably the best club tournament there is not only in terms of the ferocity of the competition, but the appeal to fans who follow their teams all over Europe thanks to accessible, relatively inexpensive short-haul travel.
He will also have to persuade those in his own country, as well as England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and the southern hemisphere nations, that what we need in the current circumstances is another global event to compete with the World Cup, Lions tours, and the rest of an overcrowded international and club calendar.
Laporte is also reading from a different script to EPCR, the European Cup’s administrative body. They put out a statement saying that they were in discussion with shareholders regarding a global club tournament which might take place every four years – and which would ‘complement’ the European Cup and Challenge Cup.
The sort of global club tournament EPCR envisage is likely to be along the lines of the football equivalent, whereby the six top club teams in the world meet over ten days in one host city to decide the FIFA World Club Champion. (Liverpool won this for the first time last year.)
Initially, that prototype would make much more sense than Laporte’s idea of trying to kill off the European Cup in one fell swoop.
Here’s something that Laporte should also consider. The next time he or anybody else at the top of Rugby Union’s administrative pyramid decides to put forward a game-changing plan of such magnitude they should have thought it through to the last detail – including feasibility studies which have already received widespread support – rather than going off on a flight of fancy.
NICK CAIN
