Unofficial England Forum Poster SK88's Views on what should happen now!  

“The sky is falling, the sky is falling” so cry the England fans after the disaster of the loss to Argentina , “the club game is ruining the players” cry some; others wail that “the RFU are ruining the clubs which is ruining the players”.  Either way we are not in 1917 Russia so a massive revolution is not necessary merely taking our medicine with give from all concerned.  Club before country may be my preference but as is listed bellow both side need to reduce and restructure for everyone’s betterment.

Firstly the club system is not broken; instead the drastic scaling back of rugby red tape is needed.  First for the guillotine would be the salary cap.  This not only unfairly punishes big clubs but stops an English Stade Français from emerging.  If we did not have this cap then the good English players would migrate to the big clubs and would play together on a more regular basis, Neil Back started at Nottingham, Ben Kay at West Hartlepool (or some club of similar stature), Austin Healy at Orrel, all then moved on to bigger and better things.  As the English teams would then have better teams they would be more competitive at Heineken Cup level, also the good young players would be toughened in the Heineken Cup knock out stages as well as the pool stages.  Ireland ’s franchises shows that this helps players’ development, see Ronan O’Gara and Peter Stringer growing up in the Heineken Cup, the progress of Sam Vesty and Wasps backs that have been regularly exposed to Heineken Cup rugby supports this theory. 

Another consequence of the salary cap is that there are no easy games.  This is viewed as a good thing where as in reality it is a very bad thing.  As no games are easy it is very hard to ease players into professional rugby, thus why teams turn to hardened foreigners, this could well explain why there have so few good English props in the last ten years, as well as the lack of tens, for example there was no time to blood Ross Broadfoot or Luke Myring who needed time to develop into class tens, the only tens that make it are something special like Flood or Lamb.  A consequence of the level nature of the premiership is that every year there are different teams in the Heineken Cup this means that teams which were good last year but poor this year gain entry to the Heineken Cup, great examples are Quins and Leeds both of whom were in the Heineken Cup during their relegation year.  If there were less change at the top then our teams, and players, would gradually gain the experience necessary much like Ireland ’s backs, including Geordan Murphy, have.

Another thing to go would be England training camps.  I propose that the RFU gets the players a week before the game and not before.  This would stop the England coaches over complicating things.  Admittedly on things such as defence patterns perhaps franchisees would be better as then the RFU could enforce a blanket defence system but this didn’t seem to harm once they had a settled side, so I imagine would not harm them in the future.

The split Premiership is a pretty good idea, but the EDF cup should be kept as it is because the cup is a good tradition and a break from the vitally important premiership, also eight games cut is more than enough.  There should be two tour games at home and two tour games away for England, this means we should play every top ten team once a year; rather than the stupid system we have now where we play Australia twice a year but South Africa once every four years.  A full ‘A’ program on at Autumn International and 6Nations time would also help as an intermediate step between club and international rugby.  The A team should also have tours rather than the Churchill cup every year, as it exposes players to different cultures; for example a warm up game against Chile then a game against Argentina ‘A’ would be great fun, or playing New South Wales then Australia ‘A’.  If a full ‘A’ programme could not be agreed during the 6Nations with the big countries then we should send the lads to Romania , Georgia or Portugal .  This would also mean we could be smug about helping grow rugby when talking to kiwis.  During the 6Nations and Autumn Internationals clubs could arrange friendly fixtures against Celtic league opposition or opposition from the other pool.  This would provide rugby for the rest of the players not involved with the national team and give coaches more time to experiment with youngsters.  The use of the loan system as a method of giving players experience at a decent level should be strongly encouraged, for instance Academy lads being sent out rather than Tom Varndell.  If no competitive rugby was played on international weekends then top clubs would be less inclined to have massive squads to cover for absentees this would free up more players for other clubs and encourage teams to give young cheap English lads a crack during these periods.

Relegation would be kept with the bottom team in each pool playing off in a double legged relegation decider.  The semi-finals for the championship would be double legged because it would stop any whinging about one pool being stronger than an other. 

With no salary cap there would be the temptation to do a ‘Sarries’ and pack your team with expensive imports.  This is better than ‘doing a Northampton’ and packing your team with ok-ish foreigners as it exposes other clubs English talent to a higher level of competition and will help the few English players at that club, Richard Hill must have learnt a thing or two from François Pieenar.  Foreigners can bring on talented youngsters, Pat Howard helping nurture Andy Goode inside him and Leon Lloyd outside him as well as Carlos Spencer with John Clarke are good examples, so as long as these players were top draw there is no problem.

In conclusion I propose:

15 weeks of Premiership action including play offs

5 weeks of EDF cup including knock out rounds

9 weeks of Heineken Cup including knock out rounds

9 weeks of internationals/’A’ games/friendly fixtures

14 weeks of breaks.

No salary cap

Relegation

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