Thursday, 17 June 2010

Club champions Currie are one of three clubs in the B&I Cup next season
 
A shared vision of improving the performance and intensity of Scotland’s club game has been sited as the grounds for a groundbreaking league and cup restructure to be tabled in partnership by Scottish Rugby and the forums of Premier 1, 2 and 3 at this year’s AGM.
The plan proposes a change to Scotland’s top two leagues (Premier 1 and Premier 2) and the Premier Cup in a bid to increase the intensity and standard of Scotland’s top club tier while offering a more intense environment for the county’s best young players.
Scottish Rugby head of community rugby, Colin Thomson said: “The need to reformat our leagues was prompted by the introduction of the British and Irish Cup last season and the pressures that the competition put on both the organisation of Premier 1 and the competing clubs.
“ Coupled with that is the growing need to work closer with our clubs to raise the standard of Scottish club rugby and bring it closer to the professional game, while retaining the clubs’ community identity.
It’s proposed that the top two premier leagues begin the season as normal until each club has played each opponent once (11 games). Then, in November, the 24 teams from Premier 1 and 2 will be split into three divisions of eight.

Each group of eight will then play a single fixture against their new league opponents (seven games) to determine promotion, relegation and qualification for the British and Irish Cup.
Dundee High Rugby head coach, Ian Rankin, said: “Together we agreed that if we want to raise the standard of play we need to improve the competition and intensity of Premier 1 and 2, while freeing up time for, for instance, teams to compete in the British and Irish Cup or for individual players to prepare for age-grade international commitments.
“Graham Lowe [Scottish Rugby director of performance rugby] and Colin Thomson met each of the three Premier leagues in February and since have worked to agree a way in which all of these needs could be met. This proposal is the result of months of partnered work and in which players and management are very excited about.“The pleasing thing for me is that the clubs and the union have worked together to come to a consensus. We now go to the AGM hopefully to have this rubber stamped and ask that the whole of Scottish rugby recognise this shared approach to a common goal.”
The intensified competitive environment would also see Scotland’s top young academy and age-grade players spending more time with the clubs and while the pre-season pro-player draft would proceed as it has in previous seasons, it would be redrafted after the split (to the top eight teams and for those participating in the British & Irish Cup) in a bid to boost the intensity of the Scotland’s top tier even further.
Graham Lowe, added: “The shared feeling is that, through this new league structure, the players would be playing in a more intense environment where they‘ll be challenged week in week out by a programme of training and playing that, in partnership with the clubs, relates specifically to the individual development programme of each player.
“The first 11 games of the season are going to be hugely important in respect of teams getting into the top or middle eight so the margin for error is smaller and therefore the pressure to perform in an environment where all of the games are meaningful is bigger.
 
“The advantage of this is that when the professional and academy players are made available to the clubs they’ll be involved in a more intense competition where they will have to perform on a consistent basis.”
A restructure of the Premier Cup is also an intrinsic part of the proposal.
While the National Shield and Regional Bowl will remain unchanged, the Premier Cup would see the competing 36 teams from Premier 1, 2 and 3 drawn in nine pools of four, seeded according to the previous season’s performance in league competition.
The top seven winners of the pools will go direct into the quarter-finals while the bottom two winners will play off for eighth place with the eight teams progressing to the knockout stages.
Thomson added: “League competition is our priority so we must allocate the best playing windows available to the league, however, we also need to improve the standard of our cup competitions.
“This proposal guarantees all teams a minimum of three cup games and allows the cup to fit in to the season without having extra rounds for the British and Irish Cup teams to return to.
“It also offers Premier 3 / bottom eight teams to raise their standards by tackling stronger opposition during the second-half of season while crucially reducing the length of the season for all involved.
“It’s win-win.”

This article was posted on 17-Jun-2010, 17:06 by Hugh Barrow.