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Heineken Cup deal to cost £10m a year
10/05/2007 |
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Twickenham will today start counting the cost of the decision of the Heineken Cup organisers to make the future of the tournament conditional on it reaching an agreement with its leading clubs over the management of elite players by the end of next week.
Rugby Football Union officials yesterday reacted indignantly to Tuesday's meeting of European Rugby Cup Ltd which saw the Celtic unions, France and Italy shift from their position of last month, when they said that the Heineken Cup would go ahead regardless of whether leading French and English clubs took part next season and signed a new tournament accord.
The RFU management board chairman, Martyn Thomas, said a new agreement with Premier Rugby would cost at least an extra £10.6m a year, taking the total amount to up to £17m. In return for the new money, which would largely pay for the club contracts of the 32-strong England elite squad and the top 32 Under-20 players, the clubs would agree to block the November international and Six Nations windows, allow players a week off during the three club-only sections of the domestic season and, initially for two years, allow the union's director of elite rugby, Rob Andrew, to arbitrate whether a player was fit to play in disputes between a club's medical staff and England's.
Andrew met Premier Rugby's negotiating team last week and believes he is close to securing an agreement over details, but the problem for the RFU is financing it. The clubs say their top 32 players earn £8m between them (£250,000 each) with salaries of Under-20 players averaging £60,000 a year, leaving Twickenham with a bill of nearly £10m before the financing of academies, the first division and players' international match fees are brought into the equation.
"The issue is whether we can strike a deal the union can afford without having to rob Peter, in the form of the community game, to pay Paul," said the RFU chief executive Francis Baron. "We currently give Premier Rugby £5m and reckon they are looking for at least an additional £10.6m. Our objective in seeking an agreement is to restore England to the position we occupied in 2003: the decline since has cost us £3m-£4m a year and, if we could reverse it, that money would go to Premier Rugby." The RFU and the clubs meet again today for negotiations.
"We have to achieve something in 10 days that we have failed to do over a long period of time and reach an agreement," said Thomas. "We will give it everything and we appreciate Premier Rugby have some genuine concerns, but I do not think ERC had to make the new Heineken Cup agreement conditional on our striking a deal with the clubs in less than two weeks because, under existing contracts, we had two years to do it and our clubs had agreed to take part in next season's Heineken Cup."
ERC was persuaded by the Premier Rugby chairman Tom Walkinshaw, who objected to a French peace proposal, arguing he was confident that the political differences in the English game would not take long to resolve. Walkinshaw insists that, unlike last February when the union thought it had reached an agreement over elite players, he was able to deliver this time. "We have to reach a legal but non-binding agreement by next week," said Thomas. "The big issue is the cost." The clubs will today suggest ways Twickenham can raise extra revenue, including an extra autumn international and linking up with First Division Rugby to create a 30-strong professional club elite.
(Source: Guardian.co.uk)
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