CVC deal is great news for the clubs
So, the Gallagher Premiership clubs, plus London Irish, are all going to cop for a sizeable wedge following the deal they have struck with CVC, but how will the money be spent?
I was surprised that there was so little speculation about that on the supporters’ websites. A Saints fan suggested buying the chippie near the ground, and a debate broke out on the Gloucester site about the quality of the beer on offer.
Beyond those suggestions, we don’t really know what the plan is, but it has to be great news for English rugby.
The owners get a bad press from time to time, but where would the English game be without them? They have created a league that is hugely successful, and maintained what’s best about English rugby, which is its strong club culture.
We don’t have franchises, central contracts, regions or provinces that have blighted the game elsewhere. As fans we moan about Friday evening and Sunday afternoon games, but the most important thing is that clubs are still there, and part of a league that is attractive to broadcasters and investors.
In his Rugby Paper column, Jeff Probyn argued that when the CVC deal went through the RFU should cease to fund the Premiership once the current contract comes to an end. Surely he misunderstands what it is that the RFU is buying?
It is the clubs and their owners who take the risk and agree contracts with England-qualified players, and who run academies to bring through new talent, and if the RFU want to take those players away for England training, for the Six Nations, the Autumn internationals, and the RWC, they have to pay a fair price for access.
Without those players Twickenham doesn’t get filled, the revenue doesn’t flow into the RFU coffers, and get disbursed to the lower levels of the game – it’s rugby’s version of a virtuous circle.
Jeff suggests the RFU could fill the England team with players from ‘other leagues’: well, some of the French exiles might be available, but that really leaves the Championship. Would punters want to turn up to see such an England team being ritually humiliated?
Why can’t Jeff, and the other Premiership bashers, applaud the fact that we have such a vibrant and competitive league, and that the RFU and the Premiership have reached an accommodation that suits both parties?
So, over the Xmas period raise a glass to our club owners who have sunk their money and their time into the game we love. Without them, goodness knows where English rugby would be. I n round four of the Champions’ Cup, Munster lost away to Castres, and subsequently two Castres players were cited and received short bans. Billing itself as ‘Ireland’s most popular sports show’, Off The Ball last week featured ex-Munster back rower Alan Quinlan in what can only be described as an extended whinge about the injustices suffered by the men in red!
He moaned that Castres should have received two red cards, moaned about other incidents all suppos‘our’ edly perpetrated by Castres, moaned about referee Wayne Barnes and his ‘English’ team of assistants and the TMO, saying that Nigel Owens (a PRO14 ref) would have handled it better, and about the French side’s disrespect for rugby’s values. It was a virtuoso display of disgruntlement!
The subsequent disciplinary hearing found that Rory Kockott had made contact with the eyes of Munster’s Chris Cloete, but that it merited a low entry point for the offence, of four weeks reduced to three. Despite that, Quinlan insisted on calling it an eye gouge, which it most certainly wasn’t.
Quinlan should know about those things – after all he got 12 weeks off after making contact with Leo Cullen’s eyes back in 2009, costing him his place on a Lions tour!
He has always insisted that wasn’t intentional, and that his contact with Cullen’s eyes lasted only 0.4 seconds, yet he relied on a still photograph to illustrate Kockott’s guilt! Surely by now everyone bar Quinlan knows that stills are the most unreliable form of evidence there is?
One of rugby’s values is sportsmanship, which must include accepting defeat with good grace, but that seems to have passed Quinlan by.
“Raise a glass to club owners who have sunk their money and time into the game we love”