Rugby Union: Cross-border collisions and no ring fences

ACCORDING TO Francis Baron, the nearest thing Twickenham has to a no-nonsense tough guy, tomorrow week is "drop-dead decision day"; the final, irrevocable cut-off point for agreement on the shape of next season's domestic fixture list. If the "drop-dead" reference is a trifle unfortunate, given that England's disillusioned rugby public would love to see the game's politicians do precisely that, Baron has at least earned himself a brownie point by slapping a time limit on all the whining and whingeing and windbaggery. Assuming the chief executive of the Rugby Football Union stays true to his word, England's Premiership clubs have eight more days in which to shut up and put up.

The club owners, in the guise of the English First Division Rugby executive board, go into their huddle in London on Tuesday and it is by no means fanciful to place it among the most significant meetings in the brief, bloody history of professional union. If they get it right, they will be in clover; indeed, they might even turn a penny or two, somewhere along the line. If they get it wrong, they will probably spend most of next season in court - where, as we know only too well, the men in wigs will end up earning far, far more than the men in jockstraps.

Tom Walkinshaw of Gloucester, the EFDR chairman, is charged, along with his well-to-do colleagues, with agreeing a blueprint for the 1999-2000 campaign and selling it to the RFU and any other governing body registering an interest. No one is pretending they will have it easy. Next season has already been seriously complicated by a World Cup that wipes out much of the autumn and, as is usual in this game, there is a mountain of political baggage to be shed before consensus becomes a possibility, let alone a reality. Do the English want to play in the European Cup, or don't they? Do they want a British league? An Anglo-Welsh league? An all-English Premiership? What about Cardiff and Swansea? Where do the Welsh rebels stand? Answers on a postcard, please...

By way of preparing the debating ground, it is time to tell a few home truths, to call a spade a shovel. In many ways, the financiers - the Nigel Wrays, the Andrew Brownswords and, yes, the Sir John Halls - deserve the support of all those who sidestep the Saturday afternoon trudge to Homebase in favour of paying good money at the gate to watch their local Premiership club. The owners have, after all, put their own hands in their pockets and attempted to create something from the chaos unleashed by a hopelessly inept International Board in the summer of 1995. But there are dark forces at work among the money men and if the commercial hard- liners get their way, rugby's rank and file may as well give up the game as a bad job and dig out the Black & Decker Workmate.

A small but influential EFDR faction have turned protectionist. They are pushing for a ring-fenced Premiership elite, a top-flight league that would be the exclusive preserve of the very biggest clubs, effectively in perpetuity. They want to Americanise the sport, to save themselves the agonies and unpredictabilities of a relegation dog-fight by re-packaging the whole shooting match as a self-serving form of light entertainment. They want to see the backs of the likes of Bedford, West Hartlepool, London Scottish, even Sale. Why? Because they are not good for business. They have small crowds and even smaller bank balances. They are not, apparently, made of the right stuff.

All of which is anathema; it stinks to high heaven and it cannot be allowed to happen. Bedford may be absolutely brassic, but they are in Premiership One on merit and until the receiver slams the Goldington Road door and turns the key, they have as legitimate a stake in the future as Saracens, Richmond or anyone else. The two-way principle - promotion and relegation, in common parlance - must remain sacrosanct. But it is obvious that a 14-team Premiership is too unwieldy to accommodate both a return to European competition and a long-term commitment to the Tetley's Bitter Cup. A leaner league format is the only solution.

No such format will include the Irish, who are happily ploughing their own furrow, and it should not include the Scots, who ought simply to acknowledge the lunacy of their "super team" experiment, return to their traditional district set-up and slip snugly into bed with Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connacht. That leaves England and Wales to get it on in a cross-border club competition to die for. Cardiff and Bath at the Arms Park? Pontypridd and Saracens at Sardis Road? Start queuing now for tickets.

How to proceed? Slowly. Avoid the temptation of rushing through the optimum 10-team version in time for next season. Undue haste would involve a vicious cull of the lesser lights, a flurry of solicitors' letters and, inevitably, more cynical takeover brinksmanship of the Bristol-London Scottish variety.

Far better to embrace all 14 current Premiership One teams, the two promoted sides from Premiership Two and the four major Welsh clubs, split them into conferences and give them the chance to compete for a place in the Real McCoy, which would get underway in September of next year rather than this.

The model proposed on this page is only one of countless alternatives, but it has the virtue of simplicity. The clubs have been grouped together alphabetically - what fairer system? - and would play each other home and away. A basic 18-match programme, topped off with a knock-out finale for the eight leading sides, could be fitted into a truncated World Cup season and still leave room for European and domestic cup competition. There would be a silver pot on the end of it, of course, but more importantly still, the participants would know from the very outset that they were playing for their station in the brave new world. No ring-fencing and no chicanery. Just pure sport.

Furthermore - and whisper this quietly - there is an element of realpolitik to the scheme. Those weaker, less fashionable clubs that so concern the wolfish commercial extremists of EFDR would almost certainly be lost through natural wastage. Look at Conference A and ask yourself whether Bedford or London Scottish would have a cat's hope in hell of making the top five cut.

The only likely scenario is that they would have their shot at the big time, fail gloriously and happily accept a place in the second division. Not quite out of sight, but out of the grandees' hair.

Walkinshaw, Wray and the rest have given plenty of folding stuff to this ridiculous old game, but club rugby in these islands now needs them to give some ground. In short, it requires a Gorbachev to emerge from a room full of Yeltsins. It may be difficult for a multi-millionaire to take this on board, but no one in sport gets everything he desires. Understand that, chaps, and the future may still be yours to enjoy.

A UNION BLUEPRINT

Conference A Conference B

Bath Newcastle

Bedford Northampton

Bristol Pontypridd

Cardiff Richmond

Gloucester Sale

Harlequins Saracens

Llanelli Swansea

Leicester Wasps

London Irish W Hartlepool

London Scottish Worcester

THE TOP four clubs from each conference enter a knockout competition: the Conference A winners at home against against the fourth-placed side in Conference B, and so on. The seeding system will stay in place for the semi-final, but the final will be played at a large-capacity neutral venue.

This conference system will be a one-off, covering the 1999-2000 season only. The top five sides from each conference will constitute a new 10- team Premiership One league, beginning in September 2000. The bottom five from each conference will form the new Premiership Two, with promotion guarantees as follows: the Premiership Two champions will go up automatically, with the runners-up facing the second-from-bottom Premiership One side in a play-off. Below the Premiership, English and Welsh clubs will compete in separate national leagues. The champions of each will play off for the right to challenge the bottom club in Premiership Two, thus maintaining an open-door policy.