From The Sunday TimesDecember 30, 2007

Regions are no substitutes for club class
The progression of English and French sides and the dire World Cups of Wales and Ireland show franchises don’t workStephen Jones
THE THREE West Country giants have been riding high of late. Gloucester and Bristol were involved in a magnificent occasion at Kingsholm yesterday and Bath are now gathering strength once again after a drop in standards.

Three giants. Three powerful squads. Do you ever wonder what sort of team could be produced if you combined the three entities, call them, say, the West Country Giants and let them loose in a regional competition?

Fortunately, you can stop wondering. I am here to tell you exactly what would happen if you amalgamated the terrible trio. Nothing. Or at least, hurtling decline in which the aggregate score was dramatically less that the sum of the old parts. Never fear, nobody is suggesting such arrant nonsense.

Instead, everybody involved in rugby in the great clubs of England and France is celebrating a year of triumph, not so much on the field as in the vindication of the concept.

There was a grim era when those in charge of English rugby tried for several years to fool themselves that a divisional or regional system was the way forward. I can still see the rows and rows of empty seats and embarrassing presentation ceremonies at the end of the stillborn Divisional Championship.

In England, it has been a heavily disruptive season because of the World Cup. But the recent agreement between club and country has removed most of the obstacles to growth. The French and English clubs are still powering on in Europe.

But as I say, it is the ethos of the club game which has emerged triumphant, triumphant over all those union-run events in the southern hemisphere, triumphant over the half-baked Magners League, in which only the Welsh have a heart for true battle. The Scots still cannot accept that people cannot and will not buy into professional clubs which are merely offshoots of their own jealous and myopic organisations.

The World Cup and its aftermath revealed the major club game in all its power. Between them, the English and French clubs drove on the national teams of England and France, played a dominant role in the improvement of Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Georgia, Romania, Italy and others. So much so that, to their eternal credit, the International Rugby Board (IRB) has brought the clubs under its ethos, including them in all top-level discussions, whereas previously, the IRB meekly joined the other nations who were resoundingly jealous of the whole club operation.

Once the World Cup had ended and the inquest began, even countries which had taken a hard line in supporting provisional or regional rugby and where there was too much central control, began to see another side to it all.

John Hart, the wise old All Blacks coach, recently produced a brilliant paper castigating the overbearing central control exerted by the New Zealand union over the Super 14 teams and the provincial clubs, calling for outside investment, promotion and relegation in an effort to shake out the smugness of the whole system, and to try to produce a style of rugby which produces players who know how to operate in the frantic tight corners.

In Ireland, the official and independent report into the team’s shocking World Cup campaign admitted that the Irish domestic system, vaunted by themselves and sundry other misguided people for so long, is producing a miserly drip of top players.

Many people also feel that the key to Ireland improving and the key to the improvement of the Magners League lies in the Irish coach giving up control of his players and allowing the provincial teams to be bonafide operations in a flat-out event.

In Wales, there is growing opinion that for all the recent improvement of the Ospreys, the teams there are drifting and that they should be returned as soon as possible to the four cities which nurtured them over a century ago. To summarise, wherever in the world people try to carve up their rugby nations with brutal straight lines on a map, instead of the existing hotbed, they have begun to suffer by comparison.

Nothing is perfect, the clubs in England and France have to kick onto another level in terms of finance, facilities and technical excellence. But the message from professional rugby in 2007 is clear.

In their heart, rugby’s followers want to belong. Few of them feel part of a region. Many of them are addicted to the adrenalin thrill of watching a team from their history and also from their present, winning a big rugby match; and more to the point, playing that match in their own backyard.

Kingsholm is some backyard, but it draws one hell of a big family.

This article was posted on 30-Dec-2007, 18:42 by Hugh Barrow.