European chairman's stark message for some fellow rugby administrators - stop holding the sport back
Four years into his role as EPCR chairman, Simon Halliday has a stark message for other rugby administrators – stop holding the sport back.
As a still-youthful business, professional rugby continues to have a myriad of teething issues about how best to run the game.
Look at how divisive World Rugby’s failed attempt this year to set-up the Nations Championship proved to be – the Six Nations countries couldn’t reach an agreement with their southern hemisphere counterparts and a project that claimed to potentially be worth billions was tossed on the scrapheap.
What exasperates Halliday most is the lack of dialogue his organisation has been involved in. When it comes to financial clout, the clubs in Europe – especially those in England and France – are massively influential. Yet their opinion has apparently never been canvassed when it comes to the running of the global game.
It’s a situation the EPCR boss believes must come to an end, otherwise self-interest will prevent professional rugby from fully fulfilling its business potential and best looking after its most prized assets, the players.
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“There is a lot of things that still need to improve and if I was to make a plea, the game has to converge in its administration and its big issues,” he told RugbyPass. “How we deal with player safety, it’s not common what we do for that. How we deal with match officials and players welfare, part of the salary cap discussion is around looking after players when they are not playing any more.
“That is a big issue for the game because we can’t expect Johnny Sexton just give his life and soul for Leinster and Ireland and then when he stops playing, what does he do? These are big things and as an ex-player, I understand the dynamic there of how we manage players through the season. Everyone just can’t take their bit.
“We see Japan might going to the Six Nations. Well, where are the extra international weekends coming for that then? People need to have to think about the whole calendar, the whole business of rugby on and off the field, and not enough people do it together. There are too many parallel lines. We have got to get closer,” he said, demanding World Rugby show better leadership from the top.
Nations Championship idea is back on… but in a different guise following World Rugby's failure earlier this year to get its project over the line
https://t.co/kJoA4u7FiF— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) November 7, 2019
“World Rugby should be that (decision-making) aggregator but World Rugby won’t even allow the clubs to get around the table. Interestingly the most integrated board that exists – and we have our challenges – is EPCR because you have got the six heads of the nations, the six unions, and you have got the three senior leagues in Europe around one table. So if you actually want to address northern hemisphere rugby, there is only one place you can go.
“I just think we need to be very grown up about what the right thing to do is rather than sit within processes and go look ‘that is not allowed because of the regulation’. But why was the regulation put in? To make us better at what we are doing, not to stop good things happening.
“If they had come and sat around our table they would have got a current view from everybody (on the Nations Championship), but to exclude the two main leagues in Europe, the LNR’s Top 14 and the PRL’s Premiership, you can’t tell me that is right. They don’t have a say in anything that World Rugby do.
“They need to change the constituents of that to give them a voice so that they get a collective view, not just the view of their executive or the view of their union chiefs because that doesn’t get deals done as they found out.”
One of the hottest topics surrounding the sport in Europe is the presence of CVC Capital Partners, the private equity firm who bought into Premiership Rugby last season. They are said to have a buy-in deal imminent with Six Nations, while there have also been discussions with the PRO14.
Does the potential exist for the sale of an EPCR stake to CVC? “It has come up in conversation quite a few times because everyone can see that they [CVC] have arrived and they can see it formally in one place (England) and in talks with the majority of our stakeholders,” said Halliday.
It could be getting worse for Saracens https://t.co/88qO2w2zC0
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) November 6, 2019
“It hasn’t progressed beyond the acknowledgement of it because they are private discussions and I think the way we run our tournament, it doesn’t change what we need to get done.
“The world of rugby is changing but that is not just us, it’s World Rugby, it’s Japan, it’s the financing of the game generally. It is something that is a real topic and we are just part of that discussion,” he said before downplaying suggestions that Saracens’ recent Champions Cup triumphs have been sullied by their breaches of the Premiership salary cap.
“It’s a non-issue for me. We are in the first stages of hearing about it or reading about it. I don’t get a briefing from the regulatory panels of the Premiership. I don’t think there is an application. The only application to Europe is the extent to which they can qualify for the competition against whatever their own league tells them.
The former England captain put Saracens on blast this morning at the @ChampionsCup launch
– writes @heagneyl #saracens https://t.co/1IQrhYB1oY
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) November 6, 2019
“I put that (salary cap) under the heading that we are their stakeholders, they own us, we are not an independent body that looks down on these things and says that is not good enough. So we have let them get on with it.
“It is an issue across all the territories because that is rugby. I remember in my first final (the 2016 Challenge Cup), the number of South African players in the Montpellier team caused a lot of comment from the Harlequins.
“I said: ‘Every league, every province or union supplies its group of players and we take that in good faith because we have got no option and why would we challenge it?’ We have a participation agreement to be bound by the rules of our tournament.
“That doesn’t speak to things like you have to adhere to a salary cap, there is no reference to it. But it has been a huge thing for rugby. I don’t think anyone is going to understate that and the timing of it has been terrible, but there is no good timing for that sort of thing.”
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Comments on RugbyPass
late hit what late hit it wasn’t at all late and can clearly see he was committed before the tackle
1 Go to commentsChristian Lio -Willies 2 try perfomance was a standout. As was captain Scott Barrett. Up front was where the boys won it.They are a great team and players. Fantastic Crusades , you can keep going.
1 Go to commentsI don't know how the locals feel about that? I guess if you call yourselves the Worcester Wasps that might be appease. But really we need more teams in the Premiership in my view so they are not padding it out as they are at the moment. It might curtail so many players going abroad as well
4 Go to commentsNZ 😭😭😭is certainly rivaling England for best whingers cup!😭😭😭 !!!
24 Go to commentsYup. New Zealand won 3 out of 10 world cups played. SA 4 out of 8 attempts 30 Vs 50 per cent.🤔🤔
24 Go to commentsShould've done this years ago. Change Saturday kick off times to around 11am. Up and off and back home before 3pm, limit travel time too. Allows players to actually do something else with their Saturday that's family oriented or being rugby fans they could ‘watch’ pro rugby. Increases crowds etc. How can anyone that enjoys grassroots and pro rugby have to choose between the two on Saturdays?
9 Go to commentsI bet he inspired those supporters just as much.
1 Go to commentsBen Smith Springboks living rent free in his head 😊😂
67 Go to commentsGood to hear he would like to play the game at the highest level, I hadn’t been to sure how much of a motivator that was before now. Sadly he’s probably chosen the rugby club to go to. Try not to worry about all the input about how you should play rugby Joey and just try to emulate what you do on the league field and have fun. You’ll limit your game too much (well not really because he’s a standard athlete like SBW and he’ll still have enough) if you’re trying to make sure you can recycle the ball back etc. On the other hard, you can totally just try and recycle by looking to offload any and everywhere if you’re going to ground 😋
1 Go to commentsThis just proves that theres always a stat and a metric to use to justify your abilities and your success. Ben did it last week by creating an imaginary competition and now you did the same to counter his argument and espouse a new yardstick for success. Why not just use the current one and lets say the Boks have won 4 world cups making them the most successful world cup team. Outside of the world cup the All Blacks are the most successful team winning countless rugby championships and dominating the rankings with high win percentages. Over the last 4 years statistically the Irish are the best having the highest win rate and also having positive records against every tier 1 side. The most successful Northern team in the game has been England with a world cup title and the most six nations titles in history. The AB’s are the most dominant team in history with the highest win rate and 3 world cups. Lets not try to reinvent the wheel. Just be honest about the actual stats and what each team has been good at doing and that will be enough to define their level of success.
24 Go to commentsHow is 7’s played there? I’m surprised 10 or 11 man rugby hasn’t taken off. 7 just doesn’t fit the 15s dynamics (rules n field etc) but these other versions do.
9 Go to commentsPick Swinton at your peril A liability just like JWH from the Roosters Skelton ??? went missing at RWC
14 Go to commentsLike tennis, who have a ranking system, and I believe rugby too, just measure over each period preceding a world cup event who was the longest number one and that would be it. In tennis the number one player frequently is not the grand slam winner. I love and adore the All Blacks since the days of Ian Kirkpatrick when I was a kid in SA. And still do because they are the masters of running rugby and are gentleman on and off the field - in general. And in my opinion they have been the majority of the time the best rugby team in the world.
24 Go to commentsHaving overseas possessions in 2024 is absurd. These Frenchies should have to give the New Caledonians their freedom.
21 Go to commentsBell injured his foot didn’t he? Bring Tupou in he’ll deliver when it counts. Agree mostly but I would switch in the Reds number 8 Harry Wilson for Swinton and move Rob Valentini to 6 instead. Wilson is a clever player who reads the play, you can’t outmuscle the AB’s and Springboks, if you have any chance it’s by playing clever. Same goes for Paisami, he’s a little guy who doesn’t really trouble the likes of De Allende and Jordie Barrett. I’d rather play Carter Gordon at 12 and put Michael Lynagh’s boy at 10. That way you get a BMT type goalkicker at 10 and a playmaker at 12. Anyways, just my two cents as a Bok supporter.
14 Go to commentsThanks Brett, love your articles which are alway pertinent. It’s a difficult topic trying to have a panel adjudicating consistently penalties for red card issues. Many of the mitigating reasons raised are judged subjectively, hence the different outcomes. How to take away subjective opinions?
9 Go to commentsYes Sir! Surprising, just like Fraser would also have escaped sanction if he was a few inches lower, even if it was by accident that he missed! Has there really been talk about those sanctions or is this just sensational journalism? I stopped reading, so might have missed any notations.
9 Go to commentsAI is only as good as the information put in, the nuances of the sport, what you see out the corner of the eye, how you sum up in a split second the situation, yes the AI is a tool but will not help win games, more likely contribute to a loss, Rugby Players are not robots, all AI can do if offer a solution not the solution. AI will effect many sports, help train better golfers etc.
45 Go to commentsIt couldn’t have been Ryan Crotty. He wasn’t selected in either World Cup side - they chose Money Bill instead. And Money Bill only cared about himself, and that manager he had, not the team.
28 Go to commentsYawn 🥱 nobody would give a hoot about this new trophy. End of the day we just have to beat Ireland and NZ this year then they can finally shut up 🤐
24 Go to comments