Showdown in Dublin for Europe’s powerbrokers

After weeks of posturing over the future of the Heineken Cup, European Rugby stakeholders will all meet face to face for the first time in a Dublin hotel today to begin thrashing out a way forward for the continent’s premier club competition.

The last five days have seen tensions rise considerably since the announcement last Thursday by Premiership Rugby Limited, the body representing the English clubs, that they had sold not only the TV rights to their domestic competition to BT Vision but also to their clubs’ European games from 2014.

This despite PRL’s assent in June as a board member of European Rugby Cup, the organisers of the Heineken Cup, to a new, collective four-year extension of the competition’s television rights with Sky running from 2014 to 2018.