Barnes welcomes Champ clubs in Prem Cup
THE Premiership Cup will involve Championship teams next season and Hartpury director of rugby John Barnes believes it’s a great move for the competition.
The new format will see the top 24 teams in the country split into four mixed pools of six, kicking off on September 8.
Exeter are the current champions after their extra time victory over London Irish last month.
Barnes believes the beginning of the competition will act as a good pre-season for next year’s Championship.
He said: “It’ll be a great challenge and welcomes the Championship teams into the elite game. It’s during the World Cup, so rugby interest will be high and we’re looking forward to it. We’ll give a lot of young students game time in those first five matches and will see it as a good pre-season. Hopefully our supporters get to see some top sides.
“We’ve played big teams in the past as we often play Gloucester in pre-season and have played Bristol before in the league. So, it’s not unusual to play a Premiership team and we played the Ospreys in last year’s preseason.”
Barnes added: “Since the British and Irish Cup finished a few years ago, playing each other again and again in the Championship Cup is pretty tough. Teams approach it differently, the top teams with full time big squads can afford to still put out a really strong team. It’s not been great for the middle, lower table sides, they don’t bring in particularly big crowds, so you don’t get much income and it costs you to travel. We had Jersey in our group, so that cost us a large amount of money to play them in the Cup as well as the league. I think this is a good change and the Premiership teams will welcome it as well.”
Hartpury were on course for their highest ever finish in the Championship but a run of six defeats has seen them drop down the table, much to the frustration of Barnes. He said: “We were on a good run of seven wins in a row but then we hit Ealing who were a step ahead. A bit of an issue for us and Nottingham this year is that we’ve had Jersey and Ealing in the cup, so having to play those two teams eight times has taken a toll on us. Losing to those two took the wind out of our sails plus taking some dents as physically they’re tough games.”