Progress in Euro talks, but deal a long way off

Two days of talks ended yesterday in Dublin with the ERC and its six member unions moving halfway towards the rebellious English and French clubs and their demands for a radically altered European club structure.

Even at that, it doesn’t look like it will be half enough.

A mere handful of hours passed after the details of the deliberations in the Irish capital were made public before Mark McCafferty, chief executive of Premiership Rugby (PRL), reiterated their insistence on a “fresh start”.

This despite McCafferty admitting that the consensus reached under the mediation of Canadian lawyer Graham Mew ticked off a number of the boxes proposed by the English and French clubs as they move inexorably towards their new dawn.

Changes to both competition and qualification structures were announced by Mew, as well as an acceptance that the distribution of revenues needed to be split more evenly between the PRL, Ligue Rugby National (LNR) and the PRO12.

It now remains to be seen if these latest talks play any meaningful part in salvaging the Heineken Cup or if they were merely a fruitless exercise that amounted to making silent movies while the rest of the world had moved on to talkies.

McCafferty seemed adamant last night. He insisted that it remains all systems go for the proposed Rugby Champions Cup and that more meat will be added to the bones of the new tournament during the month of November. The English and French clubs have long since nailed their manifesto to the doors of the ERC offices and walked away vowing nothing more to do with them, and so it was that they were absent from the discussions in Dublin this week.

Just as noticeable was the absence of anything to do with the tangled web that is the TV rights issues, one which currently has the ERC signed up to one deal with Sky and the Premiership clubs betrothed to another with BT. That alone could scupper any dwindling hope of a rapprochement.

The IRFU opted against offering any public reaction to the mediators’ statement last night although the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) chief executive Roger Lewis spoke of his optimism that “European Rugby will continue next year”.

Lewis is in a particularly difficult position given the statement released by the four Welsh regions on Tuesday night in which they gave their “full support” to the new tournament as proposed by their club colleagues in England and France.

For what it may be worth, the Dublin delegations agreed to a reduction in teams from 24 to 20 for what the statement tactfully labelled as the “Primary Competition” with England and France guaranteed six each and the PRO12 seven.

The term ‘meritocratic qualification’ was also mentioned but then so too was the stipulation that each of the six countries be guaranteed at least one club in the main event with the 20th spot emanating from an end-of-season pay-off system.

Limited to the English and French teams in year one, this would be expanded to include two PRO12 sides thereafter with home advantage guaranteed for the PRL and LNR sides, but eight ‘Celtic’ sides could still make it.

That is unlikely to find favour with the Anglo-French club alliance but it is the agreement on revenues which makes for the most interesting reading even if the unions have bowed to the call for monies to be distributed more equitably among the three leagues.

The Mew statement yesterday made a point of stressing that an equal share - one-third per league - would only be acceptable as long as the “monies to be received by the PRO12 countries would not be less than the current levels”.

Saracens chairman Nigel Wray, another of the most public proponents of a ‘New Deal’, has promised “more money for everybody” but yesterday’s insistence on a minimum bottom line for the Celts and Italians raises the bar.

The Heineken Cup alone generated approximately €51.57m from the 2012/13 campaign and, of that, 52% (almost €27m) was divvied up among the PRO12 clubs with the PRL and LNR splitting the remaining 48% down the middle.

All of which would suggest that the proposed Rugby Champions Cup would need to bring in roughly €80m a season in order to ensure that the PRO12 representatives do not suffer a drop in their income streams.

A tall order.

The ERC and the six unions will meet with the mediators again “within the next ten days” to discuss how to implement the agreements already reached and address the even thornier issues of who will run the tournaments and who will show them.

And on it goes.