Celtic Cup ticks more development boxes

So far, so positive is the vibe for the new Celtic Cup as the eight-team Irish-Welsh development competition heads into its second round this weekend.

Designed to replace the British & Irish Cup, scrapped after English Championship clubs withdrew for 2018-19, the Celtic Cup got underway last weekend with a round of derbies on either side of the Irish Sea.

This weekend features cross-border fixtures as the competition breaks with the B&I format of shadowing the Champions Cup schedule by playing out over six consecutive weeks.

With the teams divided into Irish and Welsh pools the top sides in each will contest an Irish versus Welsh final on the seventh weekend, October 20/21.

From the opening round’s action, which saw Leinster A win at Ulster A and Munster A see off Connacht in Cork, the Celtic Cup seems to be meeting the criteria envisaged by IRFU Performance Director David Nucifora when he outlined the new contest during the summer.

“The B&I Cup served us really well during the years of its existence, but we were at the whim of the English clubs and, thankfully, we had started talking over a year ago about alternatives in case this happened,” Nucifora said.

“The main aim of it, it is a development competition, but hopefully the fact that we’ll be doing it over seven consecutive weeks gives us a lot more replication of what the players, coaches, support staff and match officials will receive when they get promoted up into a proper league.

“That’s important. For all of the good the B&I Cup gave us, it was sporadic, and the intensity of going back-to-back for seven weeks enables us to mimic what is going on in a proper league where players have to prepare, recover, strategically prepare themselves for new opposition and the same thing goes for developing coaches and our match officials. It will be an important opportunity to develop the next tier of referees.”

Munster A are in Swansea on Saturday to face Ospreys A at St Helens with their head coach Peter Malone giving the Celtic Cup his approval following an opening 24-16 victory over Connacht Eagles.

“It’s a great competition,” Malone said. “You’ve Tom McCartney playing for Connacht there, we had Darren O’Shea and James Hart playing for us, there was a lot of experienced guys there and the younger guys stepped up as well.

“I think they (the experienced players) actually add to it. It’s like the physicality of Tom McCartney in the first half for Connacht, our guys had to learn how to match that and I felt they did in the second half.

You’re never going to be a professional player, especially in the forwards, if you can’t deal with that sort of physicality so from that point of view it’s great for development.

Munster fielded a side with 10 academy players and Malone sees that kind of number as the template for Celtic Cup selection.

“That suits well and I think if we load it up with (senior) players for (getting) gametime, yeah, one or two guys need gametime but if it’s all for gametime purposes it’s not going to benefit our next generation of players.

“It’s a development competition but we reserve the right to put in three or four senior guys if we feel we need to, if it helps the team or it’s for their gametime but primarily we’ll be looking to develop guys through this competition.”

Malone agreed with Nucifora’s assertion that running the Celtic Cup off in consecutive weeks was more advantageous in the development of young professionals although he added it was too soon to deem the idea a success after just one round.

“I’ll tell you in seven weeks, how many bodies we’ve still standing! We’ll go week by week with the competition and see how we go with it. From the point of view of mimicking what they do at PRO14 level it’s probably better than the B&I Cup because that was (in) two weeks (blocks on Champions Cup weekends) but we’ll see in six or seven weeks.

“The first game was good and the level of competition was excellent so it’s ticked all the boxes this week anyway.”