Yesterday saw the launch of this year’s Heineken Cup competition for the best rugby union clubs in Europe. By all accounts it was a strange affair with no one really concerned with this season’s competition but rather what the following season would offer. Yesterday also saw the company (European Rugby Company – ERC) that runs the Heineken Cup try once more to get the English and French teams to come and talk to them in October – this despite the fact that they served notice 12 months ago that from 2014 they will no longer take part in the competition.

At the same time as this is happening the real world is colliding with the fantasy world. The Welsh regional teams are facing an uphill struggle to keep going. They depend on European club rugby to survive and keep their best players however with its forth coming collapse they are looking at loosing both their best players, to England and France, and most of their money, which I suppose is two sides of the same coin. Interestingly the Welsh clubs don’t get the money for playing in the Heineken Cup directly but distributed from the Welsh Rugby Union, which uses the money earned by the regional clubs, in part, to support Welsh rugby as a whole. Whilst this may seem like an very egalitarian approach it also means that there is an inbuilt tension that when the system comes under stress quickly blows up in every one’s face. I guess that is what will happen very shortly in Wales.

And then we come back to the two mega buck organisations in all this SKY Sports, official media partners for the Heineken Cup and BT Sports, which has the rights to the Aviva Premiership Rugby. It seems that Sky’s lawyers are already sharpening their knives as their would appear to be threats being issued against the directors of ERC over the new contract they signed with Sky Sports last year for continued coverage of the Heineken Cup – was the the contract signed in good faith or did the directors con the innocent and unknowing SKY? (I guess that is what the lawyers would argue but few would believe)

So in the end of this sorry state of affairs the old saying of “…follow the money…” will be proven once more to be correct. And as usual the path will lead to very highly paid lawyers from the city of London who will make a fortune on the back of all this. In the mean time much of the traditional rugby hinterland will wither away to be replaced by the only two structures that are big enough to support professional Rugby – England, France (with perhaps some form of Irish contribution although that is far from certain). It is all very sad but inevitable if you want to have a professional sport which only works with money, lots of money, coursing through it’s veins.

Simon Marchini
www.simonmarchini.co.uk