Silent truce emerges as talks on ERC future move to Rome

For a full week they looked on, as their disputed dirty linen was aired in public, but the continent’s rugby powerbrokers kept their laundry in-house yesterday after taking the first, tentative steps towards a new accord for the European game’s club tournaments.

Seventeen officials from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France, Italy and the ERC spent five hours in a conference room in Dublin’s Westbury Hotel but any sparks that may have flown certainly didn’t spread beyond the doors of the Grafton Suite.

Even Mark McCafferty, Premiership Rugby’s chief executive and a man who has assumed a leading role in this drama, was reluctant to divulge anything beyond the fact that it had been “a good discussion” while adding that it was still “early days” when asked if the Heineken Cup still had a future in its present guise.

A subsequent statement from ERC described the get-together as “productive” and added there was a universal resolve to reach an end-point to bring about a new working document for Europe’s club tournaments from 2013/14 season onwards.

So, no change, then. For now, anyway. As it stands, Premiership Rugby Limited (PRL) still has it’s £152m (€189m) deal with BT Vision which includes TV rights to European competitions while the English and French are still seeking major structural changes to the competitions.

“We made exchanges about all the opinions from Celtic, English and French and set up another meeting,” said Patrick Wolff of the Ligue Nationale de Rugby. “It was very friendly and cordial as usual but that doesn’t necessarily mean we also didn’t argue.”

Yesterday’s meeting was always going to generate interest but the PRL’s controversial TV deal, revealed last week, shovelled coal on to what was already a simmering fire and no doubt various legal teams have been poring over its content.

“At the moment there is still everything to talk (about) but it’s good business for the Premier League,” said Orazio Arancio, the former Italy flanker who was representing his federation at the first round of talks.

“We see can it help perhaps also everybody, the European Cup or this kind of tournament. We see what happens at the next meeting which will be very soon, so we hope.”

IRFU president Peter Boyle stopped briefly afterwards to describe the meeting as “informative” before declaring his optimism that there would be a resolution to the stand-off and other disputed issues,.

According to Wolff, one of the few officials who agreed to comment afterwards, the BT deal was not discussed although ERC chief executive, Derek McGrath, maintained that pretty much everything was given an airing, if not in great detail.

“I can assure you that everything that has taken place up to this point is of interest to ERC,” said McGrath, “Before we can come to an agreement we are going to have to come to terms with everything that is important to the ERC and its future.”

All parties agreed to continue the consultative process in Rome on October 8 when it will coincide with the Italian launch of this year’s Heineken Cup and there is clearly an appetite for the process to be put to bed sooner rather than later.