There is not much not love around the English club game
right no; hard words are being spoken on the vexed subject of European rugby –
Nigel Wray, the Saracens Chairman, poured an entire pipe line’s worth of petrol
on the flames consuming the Heineken Cup on Sunday by declaring that the
Premiership teams would be “quite crazy” to stay in the tournament beyond the
end of the season. The demise of the Heineken Cup in its present form is moving
ever closer after a leading English club figure said the top Premiership and
French sides would be “crazy” to remain in the tournament after this season.
Nigel Wray, the chairman of Saracens, is promising a “better” competition no
longer run by the unions.
The Premiership owners are due to meet on Wednesday to
discuss what a new tournament will look like and continue to believe there is
no way back for the existing competition run by the Dublin-based European Rugby
Club Ltd. The English and French clubs would, in my opinion, be quite crazy to
stay in the existing tournament under the existing rules,” told Wray, adamant
there can be no significant changes under the existing structure. While
Saracens made heavy weather of capitalizing on their superior physicality at
close quarters, accentuated by the numerical advantage arising from Wood’s unusually
early departure, the force with which they were able to propel their driving
mauls in a staccato, error-strewn opening half indicated that the traffic after
the interval would be of the one-way variety. The former champions went from
12-10 down at the break to 30-12 up in the space of 17 minutes. The Celtic
unions and Italy can only hope the Rugby Football Union and the French Rugby
Federation can bring pressure to bear on their leading clubs. The RFU has so
far declined to do so and is keen not to do anything which might disrupt the
players’ availability before the 2015 World Cup is staged in England. We can
match the big teams up front, must Davies when asked about the tight-five
differential. I’d be a lot more confident of doing it if we could keep eight
forwards on the pitch. Scorers: Saracens: Tries Strettle 2, Tomkins, Brits, B
Vunipola; Conversions Farrell 4, Spencer; Penalties Farrell 3. Gloucester:
Penalties Burns 4.This is a union-run competition created by the unions and,
therefore, quit rightly it’s their game. However, do not wish to play under
those conditions and wish to create our own tournament, which needs to be
better still.