TOM BRADSHAW: Tasty morsels will be served at European rugby"s top table

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Bath Rugby return to Europe’s much- vaunted ‘top table’ in October. But just how big will the feast be? And who will be providing the drinks?

The Heineken Cup could well be a thing of the past, but it might be a case of “the Heineken Cup is dead, long live the Heineken Cup”, because the brewer is understood to be in line to be the new Rugby Champions Cup’s lead sponsor.

One of the reasons for English and French clubs initially serving their notice to withdraw from the old Heineken Cup was that they felt clubs weren’t receiving enough of the tournament’s revenues – and that those revenues, under better management, could be significantly greater.

Step forward Switzerland- based European Professional Club Rugby, the club-backed organisation responsible for running the Rugby Champions Cup. It has a target of making the competition worth £100m per year.

But will the tournament produce that kind of cash?

I understand that, for its opening season, the Rugby Champions Cup is likely to have three rather than five main sponsors.

That might look disappointing, but then it’s early days for the new competition, which was embroiled in all manner of eleventh-hour negotiations last season during the protracted demise of European Cup Rugby, the now-defunct organiser of the Heineken Cup,

And a source close to commercial negotiations for the Rugby Champions Cup tells me that the tournament is close to confirming a 200 per cent increase in the value of international TV rights and a 70 per cent increase in the value of UK rights.

In other words, the top table is still likely to have some choice morsels on it.

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Bath Rugby have been on a pre-season warm-weather training camp in Portugal this week.

Given the temperatures the UK has been sizzling in over the past few days, the club may well be thinking that it could have saved the flight costs and had rugby’s equivalent of a ‘stay-cation’.

It’s been averaging about 31C of late in Vilamoura. Not much different to Blighty, really.

What a contrast to last year’s pre-season, where the entire squad was dispatched to the home of the Polish wrestling community – Sparla – for a no-frills spartan training ordeal. In terms of training locations, Sparla must surely be the opposite of the Portuguese coast.

After a day of circuits and sun-kissed floggings, Portugal offers the chance of a trip to the beach and a round of golf. Sparla’s version of downtime, by contrast, is a sojourn in the cryotherapy chamber.

Still, pre-season camps are not really about the weather – whether it be natural sunshine or artificial cold. It’s about a change of scene.

For the next umpteen weeks, the Bath squad will be running through drills day-after-day at Farleigh House. A different setting for pre-season is therefore a guard against tedium.

In that sense, whether it’s Poland or Portugal doesn’t hugely matter – just as long as it’s not Bath.

Article source: http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-local-players-make-england-debuts-1-6005709

TOM BRADSHAW: Tasty morsels will be served at European rugby"s top table