CLUBS in Scotland and Wales have held preliminary talks about staging a cross-border competition. Both sides seem keen on the idea and the discussions could lead to a champions’ play-off as early as the end of this season to get the idea moving. Eventually, the hope is that the amateur and semiprofessional Celtic clubs will win mass entry to the European Shield competition, where they would compete with similar clubs in countries such as Italy, Spain, and Portugal.
The discussions are still at an early stage and both the Scottish and Welsh rugby unions (SRU and WRU) will have to get involved once the senior club organisations begin to settle on details, but one reason that the club organisations have begun talking directly to each other is because of the lack of progress when they did attempt to go through official channels. Both the Welsh and Scots hope also to involve the Irish clubs as well, but no contact has been made yet.
The Scottish clubs had believed that the strategic review unveiled in December would bring them serious cross-border competition but were scathing in their criticism when the report came out and they found that the actual proposal suggested only a single game for the BT Premiership champions against a team, probably from Ireland. The Scottish union’s main policy for attempting to stimulate interest among senior amateur and semi-professional players is to try to introduce amateur internationals.
Senior clubs in Wales, including Neath, the Premier Division leaders, see a tournament that attracts the big-name club teams from other countries as a winner in both financial and rugby terms and cross-border competition has been an aspiration since they were split from the full-time professional level.
They see the competition as attracting significant crowds while giving leading players a wider focus than the parochial challenge of a purely domestic season. The WRU’s energies, however, have been devoted to establishing the regional teams and the clubs have found it hard to make progress.
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That all changed last week when The Times, hearing the identical complaint in both countries, put club representatives directly in touch with each other. Mike Dalgetty, a spokesman for the Scottish Premier One Forum, the umbrella body for the leading clubs in Scotland, confirmed yesterday that discussions, which he described as “extremely positive” had taken place. Both sides were keen in principle to pursue the idea, while recognising the many hurdles, cost being the biggest.
The suggestion comes at a perfect time for the Scottish clubs with the working party on the structure of the season about to have its first meeting under the chairmanship of John Jeffrey and with Terence Froud of Hawick representing the top clubs.
“This idea is one reason why the majority of the Premiership One clubs favoured a cut-down top division of ten teams, so that we can free space in the season for this sort of event,” Dalgetty said. “We would like to get involved in a wider competition. This is exactly the sort of thing the working party needs to look at. We discussed the idea in our meeting last week and the reaction was extremely positive.”
The possibility of the champions of Scotland playing the champions of Wales, probably in May, is certainly interesting Glasgow Hawks, who need only 22 points from seven games to be mathematically certain of their second consecutive title. “It is just the sort of event that we think is important,” said Brian Simmers, the Hawks’ chairman. “We have not won anything yet, so it would be premature to talk about the match but if were to be organised , it is the type of event that could have a lot of benefits.” Further talks are being planned, and the possibility of linking at least some of the games with the weekends of next season’s RBS Six Nations matches seems to be gaining ground, though one problem with that is that next season, Scotland are away for both their Celtic clashes, Ireland are at home for both theirs and only Wales have one away and one at home.