The chief executive of the Welsh Rugby Union, Roger Lewis, has said he would be prepared to meet the militant English and French clubs on neutral territory.
“The WRU is happy to meet any of our stakeholder partners any time, anywhere,” said Lewis at Monday’s launch of this season’s Heineken Cup in Cardiff, where the final will be staged in May. “We are prepared to meet today, tomorrow, whenever and I do believe we can find a way out of this.”
Premiership Rugby and Ligue Nationale de Rugby have not only served notice that they will pull out of the Heineken Cup at the end of the season but they have said they will have nothing more to do with European Rugby Cup Ltd. They have said in writing that they will not be attending the Dublin summit this month nor speaking to the independent mediator hired by ERC to break the impasse, Graeme Mew.
The clubs are organising their own European tournaments for next season, saying that club competitions should be run by clubs. The unions that make up the Six Nations have an inbuilt 9-3 majority on the board of ERC, which would be in financial peril without the French and English, and the issue of control is central to the breakdown in negotiations, along with the television contract extension agreed by ERC with Sky last year after the clubs had served notice and Premiership Rugby had signed a contract with BT which included cross-border matches.
Lewis, asked if the WRU and its colleagues in the RaboDirect Pro12 – the Scottish, Irish and Italian unions – would agree to relinquish control of European club rugby, replied: “First and foremost, we have to sort out the competition itself. The WRU is very happy at Rabo teams qualifying on merit and then we have to talk about the division of money, which we agree should be more equitable. We have to be sequential in this and let’s do those two things before anything else.”
On the question of whether the unions were committed to ERC unequivocally, he said: “I do not want to be drawn on whether future talks will have to be outside ERC because all of a sudden we are negotiating 15 things at once. If we have shared understanding and agreement we can move forward.
“We have to take one step at a time. I have always been conciliatory, not confrontational, in this because we all have to respect each other’s positions.”
Lewis was adamant that the contract with Sky had to be honoured, whereas Premiership Rugby insists it will play only in a European tournament to which BT has the rights. The Rugby Football Union has been trying to explore whether a potential way out would be shared television rights, but that would require the two companies, who have become fierce competitors in the world of sport this year, to renegotiate.
“We must not lose the plot in all this,” said Lewis. “What is at stake is a great rugby competition, a bridge between the club and international games which means we are all in this together: unions, clubs, provinces and regions. It is too good to lose and common sense has to prevail. The right people have to get round the table at the right time to discuss the right things.”
The ERC chief executive, Derek McGrath, made an impassioned defence of the governing body’s record, pointing out that the Rugby Champions Cup proposed by the English and French clubs was modelled on the Heineken and Amlin Challenge Cups. But, in what is a political battle, he is like a civil servant who can only advise decision-makers.
Representatives from the four Welsh regions were at the launch anxious that the dispute is resolved so they can finalise their budgets for next season and make concrete offers to players who are coming out of contract, including this year’s Lions Leigh Halfpenny, Sam Warburton, Alun Wyn Jones, Adam Jones and Jonathan Davies.
“It is very frustrating,” said the Ospreys’ head coach, Steve Tandy. “We want to strengthen the squad as well as keep our top players but there are things we cannot control at the moment.”
Cardiff Blues are fighting to keep Halfpenny and Warburton, who have attracted interest from France, and their director of rugby, Phil Davies, said: “They are happy here and I am confident that if the circumstances are right we can keep them. It is vital that all this is settled quickly.”
Davies, the Wales centre who was chosen ahead of Brian O’Driscoll in the final Test between the Lions and Australia in June, is another target of Top 14 clubs. “I want to stay in Wales and we are talking,” said the Scarlets’ captain. “I just hope things can be sorted out in the next few months.”
Article source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/club/10329528/Heineken-Cup-rebels-reject-last-ditch-talks-with-European-Rugby-Cup.html
Heineken Cup split provokes peace attempt by Welsh Rugby Union
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