EDINBURGH EVENING NEWS REPORTS
BILL LOTHIAN
SCOTLAND'S top rugby clubs are to meet next week to discuss the possibility of scrapping plans to shrink the BT Premiership Division One from 12 to ten teams.

And the Evening News has learned that, instead, the number of teams in the top flight could increase to 14 teams. As the chances of a dramatic about-turn loomed large, Premiership Division One representative on the Scottish Rugby Union George Clark said today: "This issue will inevitably come up next week especially if there is a feeling from the national side that promising youngsters need to have their conditioning bolstered by being exposed to more high intensity rugby."

While expanding the Premiership may sound contradictory, Clark said that all options were now about to be explored, perhaps with a view to creating another level of competition between clubs and districts.

"Finance is obviously an enormous factor but something along the lines of an under-21 Celtic League would have obvious appeal to those running the national sides. When Scotland played France under-21s recently the opposition contained a lad who had already played in a European Cup Final. That is the sort of gap that has to be bridged.

"Where this affects the club programme is that the decision to cut from 12 to ten was made on the basis that if age-group players were going to be routinely removed in the second half of any season then it would be preferable to get the Premiership over by Christmas with a new competition introduced thereafter."

It is understood that clubs would prefer to return to a season-long tournament which might have more chance of evening out anomalies.

Others will today be pointing abroad and indicating that countries that are thriving have systems based on traditional club structures feeding national sides with no middle tier.

This article was posted on 23-Feb-2006, 13:00 by Hugh Barrow.