Still some light at end of Cup tunnel

On Rugby:Last week's decision by the ERC to press ahead with a Heineken Cup next season, and the statement that accompanied it, may well have raised more questions than answers. Nonetheless, it showed a willingness to maintain a magnificent tournament that has been jeopardised through no fault of their own and players, coaches and rugby fans all want. It also showed leadership.

Predictably, Syd "Vicious" Millar has been pilloried by the club lobby and much of the media in Britain and France and been castigated as out of touch for the frustrated outburst that pre-empted the ERC decision. It possibly wasn't the most diplomatic choice of words by the chairman of the International Rugby Board. But then again, the English and French clubs, along with the RFU, haven't cut a noticeably diplomatic course these last few months either.

If nothing else, the stance of the supposed establishment has shown they are not prepared to roll over and have their bellies tickled by the English and French clubs. It also left the door ajar, and appears to have concentrated minds.

Alas, reports of an apparent healing of the rift between the RFU and Premier League Rugby (the umbrella group representing the English Premiership clubs), notably in the French newspaper Midi Olympique, have proved predictably premature. Apparently this was based on the two-hour meeting between representatives of the two bodies after the EDF Anglo-Welsh Cup final on Sunday between Leicester and the Ospreys.

This in itself is a laugh. A two-hour meeting, at a time of crisis in the European game largely of their making?

One would have thought it behoves both the RFU and PRL to send their negotiators into a room and lock the door for however long it takes to resolve their differences over ERC share/voting rights and elite player management. And if their personal antipathy prevents them from doing that, alternative negotiators should be found.

The two warring parties owe it to their own players, coaches and fans, never mind the rest of European rugby.

A resolution of the English dispute remains the kernel of the European Cup problem, for Serge Blanco, president of the Ligue Nationale de Rugby, has said as much.

To many, Blanco's stance, and that of the French clubs who are totally supportive of him, is seen as a something of a smokescreen, the reality being that it suits the French Top 14 clubs to miss out on the European Cup next season in freeing up nine weekends for their own championship on foot of the recent television deal with Canal+, which is reputedly worth €22 million per annum.

If it also came with an improved bargaining position for Blanco to obtain a seat on the ERC board and perhaps more of a say in the IRB, thereby safeguarding the future of the French club game, all the better, and no doubt there's some truth to this. With a two-month World Cup lobbed into their seasonal calendar, and only the three weeks of the November internationals giving way in exchange, French rugby is already weary at the mere thought of the 2007-2008 season. For this, the IRB must shoulder some of the blame.

Yet, surprisingly, if there is a way out of the RFU/PRL impasse, informed sources in France say Blanco and the LNR will come back into the fold and have agreed in principle to having nine rounds of the Top 14 without their internationals, which might mean having the first two rounds during the latter stages of the World Cup.

So there is still hope, and to that end Millar will be meeting with Martyn Thomas, the management board chairman of the RFU, and Mark McCafferty, the PRL chief executive, in London later this week. Even more encouragingly, Blanco has agreed to come to Dublin next Monday to meet Millar.

Everything still hinges on the English, however, and let's not forget this will be their "third" boycott of the tournament. Furthermore, the English clubs are in clear breach of their own Long Form agreement with the RFU, which legally binds them to play in all RFU-sanctioned tournaments until 2009.

Still, an alternative tournament without them doesn't particularly appeal, though quite what the anti-Irish/anti-Celt, English-based media would like us to do is puzzling. Just fold up and die to allow an Anglo-French duopoly, or concede so much power and money that they can snap up all our players? Part of the beauty of the ERC competitions is that they work more to the benefit of the smaller European nations.

Seemingly, the English First Division clubs would be willing replacements for the Premiership clubs, but for all Bernard Lapasset's assurances, quite where French teams would come from is unclear. In the murky legal waters of French rugby, the FFR are looking into the possibility of the Pro2 teams being entered instead of the Top 14, but by all accounts the second-tier clubs are legally bound by the LNR decision. A hastily arranged gathering of regional teams drawn from lower down the French ladder merely reinvokes memories of Bourgoin conceding 92 points to Leinster in Lansdowne Road.

Undoubtedly, this latest imbroglio does underline the strength of the club game in England and France. But the centrally contracting, regional system in Ireland works (though the club game continues to suffer terribly) as it now does in Wales largely because - like the Magners League itself - it concentrates lesser resources.

Now would possibly be as good a time as any for the establishment to go to war with the English and French clubs, take the hit for a couple of years before gradually contracting the leading players centrally to regions of their own making. But, more likely, the English and French clubs are here to stay as part of the professional game, and the game is better for their continuing strength. A global game with only a franchise/regional system à la the brilliant but relatively sanitised Super 14 (witness all the empty seats in Super 14 stadia this year, and the comparative intensity of the Air New Zealand Cup and the Currie Cup) would be far too samey.

The French and English have preserved some of the game's heritage. On that, Blanco is undoubtedly correct.

And that is why a European Cup without them would be totally unpalatable.