Progress in Heineken Cup talks

The English RFU will hold another meeting with their Irish, Welsh, Scottish, Italian and French counterparts early next year as they bid to save the Heineken Cup.

Ian Ritchie, the RFU’s chief executive, was in Dublin yesterday for a meeting with the other unions – the first since they were excluded from a key meeting last month.

The meeting lasted around five hours and there was a consensus that talks were productive and that they should continue in January.