Sort out this Anglo-Welsh Cup shambles once and for all

WHAT is the Anglo-Welsh Cup good for? Absolutely nothing in terms of a comprehensible competitive format for Premiership clubs and Welsh regions alike, and it draws another blank when it comes to the greater good of the Championship – the underfunded English professional second tier – or the club leagues below it.

This is a Cup that also generates very little love from rugby supporters who yearn for a genuine English – or Anglo-Welsh – tournament full of local derbies and traditional rivalries.

It is a blot on the landscape of a sport still striving for professional standards in its administrative structure, and one that the RFU and the PRL – the administrative body of the Premiership that runs the AngloWelsh Cup – have to address urgently.

To make matters worse, the present excuse for a competition is so unattractive that it currently has no sponsor, and the prize money is paltry: a maximum of £129,500 to the winners – or the annual salary of a single decent Premiership first team squad player.

The sponsorship vacuum and financial shortfall reflects the inadequate format. This year’s regulations state that each club get £19,500 for a pool win, £20,000 for a semi-final win (and nothing for losing), and £31,000 for winning the final (with £10,000 to the runners-up).

The bizarre four pool format in which clubs play no-one in their own four-team pool, but each club in a different pool – with a skewed two home games and two away structure – concludes with the ‘winner’ of each pool going into the semi-finals.

As a consequence the kudos for winning this Cup, which is restricted to the squads/academy roster of the 12 Premiership clubs and four Welsh regions, is strictly limited.

With the Premiership ring-fencers sticking their heads above the parapet again it is also a timely warning that PRL has a ropey track record in producing coherent, meaningful tournaments.

It has been faffing about with the best way to run this one since 2005, and, having dispensed with the successful knock-out formula of the English Cup, all it has come up with in 13 years is a dog’s dinner of a competition.

Those pointing to a couple of big gates in the pool rounds – there were 18,000 at Leicester for their game against Cardiff Blues – should recognise that Anglo-Welsh pool matches are included in the Tigers season

“Supporters yearn for a genuine tournament full of local derbies and traditional rivalries”

ticket. Also, with tickets to Twickenham for the Six Nations out of court for the vast majority of Premiership rugby fans, the Anglo-Welsh is the only game in town.

Those rushing to claim the Premiership as PRL’s crown jewel need reminding that the basic homeand away structure of the elite English league, complete with promotion and relegation, was created before PRL came into existence.

English club rugby’s league system was introduced by the RFU in 1987–88. For the record, the historic first match played in Courage League National Division One – the league that has subsequently become the Premiership – was Nottingham v Moseley.

Relegation has meant that Nottingham are now in the Championship and Moseley in National 1, while clubs like Exeter and Worcester have been promoted to the top tier.

However, should the ring-fencers get their way, the right of future Exeters and Worcesters to win promotion to the Premiership will be blocked permanently.

What’s more the likes of Nottingham and Moseley are currently denied the chance to aspire to the heights because there is no Cup competition which gives them the opportunity to do so.

The solution is staring the RFU, and the Premiership, in the face, but for over a decade they have turned away to appease the ring-fence brigade. The best solution for the health of the English game – and that in Wales – would be a genuine AngloWelsh Cup.

One answer would be to divide the competition into four regions to ramp up local derbies and defer travel costs – and to give squad/academy players a bristlingly competitive tournament in which to cut their teeth.

If you allocated a Welsh side to each that would give you a South West pool (Exeter, Bath, Gloucester, Scarlets, Bristol, Cornish Pirates, Hartpury), and the equivalent in London (Harlequins, Saracens, London Irish, Cardiff Blues, Ealing, Richmond, London Scottish, Jersey), the Midlands (Leicester, Wasps, Northampton, Worcester, Ospreys, Bedford, Nottingham), and the North (Sale, Newcastle, Newport-Gwent Dragons, Yorkshire Carnegie, Doncaster, Rotherham).

Until we know the final structure of the season – which is still being mulled over by the RFU and PRL – and the number of weekends available, the format cannot be settled.

However, if there are not enough weekends to have a European Cup home and away pool format then adapt and go to a Six Nations model where one year a team have home advantage, and the next year they travel. Consider the concept of midweek matches, especially as so many squad players get precious little match-play. Have a true knock-out stage from last 16, or last 8, onwards, and run a Plate competition for those knocked out.

The formula permutations are there just as long as the RFU and PRL remember that regional rivalries work, and so do meritocratic pool and knock-out stages.

It is time for a true Anglo-Welsh Cup rather than the pale imposter we have been lumbered with by PRL.