CAIN COLUMN

There is another solution to Lions debate – cut the clubs in finacially

“A solution can be found in which clubs receive more of the money generated by the Lions”

IAN Ritchie has brought stability during his tenure at the RFU, as well as presiding over a healthy commercial balance sheet. However, the one area in which the outgoing RFU chief executive has struggled is that his knowledge of the playing side of the game – as opposed to boardroom and commercial issues – is limited.

It explains why he made the flawed decision to over promote Stuart Lancaster before his coaching track-record merited it, leading to England’s 2015 World Cup crash. The same shortfall is evident in his continued defence of the five week, eight match Lions format which he insisted recently is an agreed part of the global calendar drawn up by World Rugby in March.

Ritchie’s statement that the truncated Lions tour schedule is now tantamount to a done deal has to be challenged. It is not agreed, either in the court of public opinion or by his fellow members on the Lions board – as John Spencer, the 2017 tour manager in New Zealand and England’s representative on the board, made clear in these pages a fortnight ago.

The clandestine way in which this World Rugby decision on the global season has been made smacks of the dodgy horse-trading that has hampered Rugby Union for so long. There was no clear, open debate about future Lions tours because it was inconvenient – and because it had been decided beforehand that the current Premiership/PRO12 pitch for a reduced tour window was the only way forward.

It is not, and nor should it be allowed to stand. The playing realities of a shortened tour appear to have escaped Ritchie and the rest of the World Rugby global season assembly.

Ritchie revealed this when he said the following: “We agreed (that) an eight match tour certainly does work… It’s fairly simple to say the first game – this one was two or three days in – why wouldn’t you take that one out? The next tour of South Africa (2021) is pretty much the same, so you could easily see how you take one (fixture) out, and it would be helpful losing one more game.”

What Ritchie is missing – or choosing to ignore – is that you cannot select an international side, which brings together players from four countries, into a cohesive unit if you only have five tour matches before the Test series begins. It is simply not enough time. A five-week schedule means that with players getting, at best, two provincial matches in which to state their case, there would be no chance of assessing combinations, or developing the teamwork, to beat Southern Hemisphere nations with established teams.

Once coaches and players see this the Lions concept will be damaged, and the magic will be lost. Why would they damage their reputations by embarking on a tour which they know will be a selection lottery, and one in which there is no time for a scratch side to come together? Elite coaches and players will soon make themselves unavailable, with the attendant danger of the inducement of ever-increasing wage packets turning Lions tours into a mercenary circus.

If Ritchie does not believe that losing a couple of games and a week’s preparation is a critical issue, then he should listen closely to what the professionals at the sharp end are saying. He should talk to Warren Gatland about the difficulties he faced as head coach in getting a side together for the first Test against double world champions NZ, and why the Lions were clearly still not a joined-up team by the time the series began.

He should find out about the frustration of losing the crucial opening Test, not because your players were not good enough, but simply because they had not played together as a team before running out at Eden Park.

That way Ritchie would appreciate that on a Lions tour every player has to be given the chance to play for a Test place, and to have sufficient preparation to have a fighting chance of winning the series. Otherwise what is the point?

The idea that a five-week Lions tour is the only option available is a poor attempt at a quick fix rather than part of a coherent strategy for a global season.

It should not be beyond the Premiership/ PRO12 clubs and the Lions board to find a solution. Inevitably, it would mean a partnership in which the clubs received more of the money generated by Lions tours than they do now.

In the meantime Ritchie and those of World Rugby should ask themselves why that Lions option was not explored fully before accepting its potentially destructive alternative?