Loose Pass
This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with dreams come true, domestic health and haircuts…
This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with dreams come true, domestic health and haircuts…
OK, so it's only the vision of one domestic league Chief Executive, but Mark McCafferty's assertion this week that a World Club championship is only years away has sparked off all manner of debate across the globe.
A tournament or a one-off? How many teams? Venues? When in the global calendar? Teams from countries or hemispheres? Do you guarantee a NH-SH final by clever seeding?
A myriad of possibilities, and doubtless a new utopia for the Toulouses, Leicesters, Leinsters, Crusaders and Bulls; you can just see the Afrikaners' glee at having conquered the world.
But the most crucial aspect for the game's continued development is not only 'when', but also 'what happens to the non-qualifiers while it's on'?
Assuming this turns out to be a tournament – and given that soccer's comparable concept, the Champions League, now supersedes domestic titles for many clubs as the chief target of the season, you'd be mad not to foresee rapid expansion to at least a 16-team tournament down the years – this will make rugby's already thin and pointy pyramid top look positively javelin-like.
Consider the levels of professional competition in the south: senior club, provincial, Super Rugby, international. That's already a thin end of a wedge for relatively few full-time professional players in the respective countries, who are stretched thin in resources.
Meanwhile in the north, there's a steady stream of players from non-Heineken Cup to Heineken Cup clubs each year, salary caps or not. That also generally means clubs with less cash to clubs with more. You introduce a new elite level of competition in Europe and you run the risk of flawing that imbalance even further – there's only so much liquidity to go round.
As a one-off match, one tie, Super Rugby champions v Heineken Cup champions, there is no doubt this is a winner. More than that and you are looking at re-writing too much of the domestic seasons and messing up the internal checks and balances the respective countries have in place to keep things even. It would also be a superb export match to play in 'emerging markets', rather than some meaningless international.
But if anybody can answer the final conundrum: where would this one-off weekend fit into the calendar so as to give the clubs adequate preparation time, we are all ears. That's not a set of stars that are going to align soon.
McCafferty was also on hand to remind us all of a Premiership benchmark on Sunday: Saracens' victory over Bath was the 2000th Premiership match since the inception in 1997.
Whatever is happening with the RFU, the English club game is in remarkable health. Attendances are up, games are mostly competitive (it's the league with the smallest mean margin of victory in the world), and the clubs appear largely to be now able to work harmoniously with the RFU.
England – and France for that matter – now appear to have a fully-working model sharing international players and clubs with suitable compensations as well as a thriving sub-professional game, while the unions down under are still stretched bare financially because of the money spent on central contracts.
“As I understand it, within the next five years all the Australian Super 15 teams will have private investment. New Zealand are looking at private investment because everyone understands their model is just not sustainable,” McCafferty said.
“The RFU turn over £135m a year and invest only 10% of that into Premiership Rugby. In Australia and New Zealand, 40-50% of their revenues go into supporting the professional game.
“The consequence of that is you have less money to invest in the community game. The RFU have got the best of both worlds.”
Now, of course, they just have to ensure on-field success…
In other thrilling developments in England this week, it emerged that Joe Marler, were he to be picked for England's elite squad, would – and we utter these words carefully – not cut his hair differently.
Marler's hair – or at least the bits he leaves unshaven – is perhaps the only thing in the Premiership that overwhelms Harlequins' new kit in terms of bright colours and idiosyncratic design.
Reports have suggested that the homely and straight-laced Stuart Lancaster might select Marler on the basis of whether he conformed his coiffure to standards. But Marler is having none of it. He has already laughed in Martin Johnson's face at the suggestion, which you might think was the benchmark for rebellion were it not for Mike Tindall.
“I don't see any reason why I would have to change, or why I need to tone down my appearance,” Marler told the Daily Mirror.
“Am I going to tone it down? No. There's no need. What you look like doesn't determine how good a rugby player you are or how professional you are. I am what I am.”
That may be a cross between a United States flag and a red-eared slider, but it is also one of England's more athletic loosehead props on the block at the moment. we've heard more about Marler's haircut than Marler himself down the past few months. It's about time people looked beyond the fringe, so to speak. Hopefully Stuart Lancaster will as well.
Loose Pass compiled by Richard Anderson