Baxter backs world club champs
EXETER director of rugby Rob Baxter welcomes plans for a new club world championship providing it is financially viable.
Slated to start in June 2028, the new tournament would pitch the top eight sides from Europe against six teams from Super Rugby and two from Japan’s Rugby League One.
The format of the Champions Cup could be changed to make room in the calendar for the new event.
“If someone says to me that in four years’ time they’ve got the finances in place that cover everyone’s travel costs and there’s a TV deal that means all the clubs involved in it get millions of pounds, and it helps all the clubs be viable, thriving businesses, I would say it’s exactly what the game needs,” Baxter said.
“If what, as normal happens, is, ‘let’s try and give it a go and see if we can make it work and see if we can create some interest,’ I’d be very hesitant about it because you can easily create bigger issues in the game trying to solve issues, as we have seen numerous times.”
Baxter, whose side face Toulouse today in the last eight, led the Chiefs to the 2020 Champions Cup title and they have reached the quarter-finals in eight in three of the four subsequent campaigns.
He would want assurances that travel is sorted before the event
with the prospect of flights to places like New Zealand a lot tougher on players than trips to South Africa that clubs currently have to do in the Champions Cup.
“We’re in a European competition now and the costs for us literally overnight from Sunday knowing the result in France, to trying to find a plane, trying to get over – and we’re taking the smallest plane we can – our costs are going to be in the tens and tens of thousands pounds,” Baxter said.
“That’s just now, and that’s within a European competition. Take the reality of that and make it a world competition and go, ‘Right, we’re going to have a look at this and this is the funding that’s in place and this is what might happen’ – as much we all might want to do it, you do actually have to be able to afford to do it.
“There’s nothing negative about interesting games of rugby... but we have to make sure that everybody else wants to watch it and everybody else wants to be involved in it, not just the players and the coaches.”