Premiership rejects ‘suicidal’ call to aid Lions

Clubs are being treated with disdain, says chief Shorter league format would ‘damage brand’

The 2021 British and Irish Lions tour to South Africa could be destined for another chaotic start after Mark Mccafferty, the Premiership Rugby chief executive, suggested it would be “suicidal” for England’s domestic league to alter its format for Lions years.

Mccafferty also said that the Lions seem to treat club organisations with “disdain” and revealed nobody had reached out to Premiership Rugby to avoid a repetition of last summer’s problems. The 2017 Lions party left after the Premiership and Pro12 finals, which involved nine members of the initial group, and arrived in New Zealand three days before their first warm-up match.

The 2021 Lions tour is expected to last five weeks rather than six, with eight matches rather than 10. However, Mccafferty would not entertain the prospect of cutting the semi-final stage of the Premiership or losing fixtures in another way to allow longer Lions preparation.

“I can’t see any way in which we would change the format of the competition,” he said. “I think that is suicidal, to go in and out of different formats the same as some have suggested for World Cup [years].

“For a product as strong as the Premiership to mess around, it would massively damage the brand. I think the issue is about the structure of the rest of the season and the structure of the Lions programme.

“The unions are the Lions shareholders. Maybe they could say: ‘ We’ll play one less Test that year in order to create that week. Or we’ll go back to the thought of playing the Six Nations over six weeks rather than seven that Lions year’.

“There are a number of things that could be talked about rather than this expectation that the price of delivering must always be borne by the clubs.”

Mccafferty is open to negotiating with the Lions but has yet to hear from them and admitted the relationship required mending. “After the last Lions tour, the Lions supposedly said, ‘ We’ll pick a phone up’. But no one from the Lions has ever contacted me.

“A bit like World Rugby sometimes, they seem to have a disdain about talking to the club organisations. A lot could be improved if people sat down, demonstrated a basic respect for the club game and said, ‘How can we work together on this? What would it take?’

“We may not get to a conclusion, but we’d certainly have a better relationship than is currently the case. I understand the Lions are going to talk to us soon, but quite when I don’t know.”

Mccafferty and Bruce Craig represented Premiership Rugby in January 2017 at a World Rugby conference in San Francisco that mapped out a revised global calendar running between 2020 and 2032. The schedule agreed in San Francisco includes shifting the June Test window to July. Full details as to how it will shape the English domestic season are to be unveiled later this summer.

Although Mccafferty would be in favour of shortening the Six Nations from seven weeks to six in Lions years, he recognised that other shareholders might be more willing to compromise their domestic competition instead. He understands that the Pro 14 is willing to consider staging its final earlier prior to a Lions tour, risking more overlap with international rugby.

“[ The global season] structure was agreed in San Francisco, so nobody is moving to change that,” McCafferty said. “The RFU is not, and it couldn’t – because it is only one shareholder. In the same way, if we said, ‘ Take the Six Nations from seven weeks to six’, the RFU couldn’t deliver because they’ve got to get the other members of the Six Nations [on board]. That is where one of the difficulties arises.

“Probably if you go to the IRFU [Irish Rugby Football Union], for instance, they will have much less concern about having another week’s overlap with Pro 14. They will say, ‘ We don’t want the Six Nations to come down, even in that year, to give that week to the Lions, but we will give it in the Pro 14. Why can’t the English do it?’ ”