Peter Bills States The Obvious

[colinh]

From the Tele from Herr Bills stating the obvious. Maybe clubs should invest in the promotion of local talent and spend time investing in them like they do here in Ulster. 13 of last Fri's starting 15 were born and bred in Ulster. Another had Ulster blood and the 15 th has been adopted by Ulster. Meanwhile the great Steinmetz was injured. Not many clubs can boast that. Anyway I digress:

By Peter Bills

03 June 2006
THIS column takes no pride in it, but a view long expressed is coming sadly, brutally to reality.
Rugby football the world over is rapidly becoming simply an issue of one commodity, finance. Tradition, an esteemed history and such matters count not a jot in the contemporary rugby world.
Proof positive of this is to be found in just about every country. The French, who stage their second Championship semi-final tonight, are a classic example.
Racing Club Toulon, traditionally one of the great clubs of France where internationals like Jerome Gallion and Eric Champ plied their trade, were last week relegated from the elite of French rugby.
Yet just 12 months earlier, Toulon won promotion from Division 2, proudly clambering back to the lofty perch many regarded as theirs by right.
Dreams shattered, so much hope diffused. But why ? Compelling, utterly destructive financial figures.
Toulon's budget for the season was €7.1 million (around £5 million). Toulouse, their old adversaries who this weekend contest one semi-final of the French Championship, have a budget of €17.1 million (approx. £12.4m).
Two of this weekend's other semi-finalists, Biarritz and Stade Francais, are equally propitiously placed. Both enjoy budgets of just over €15.5 million (£11.2m).
When the two clubs met in Paris in an ordinary league game back in March, a world record 79,000 people thronged to the Stade de France.
By comparison, little Toulon has an average of 12,326 spectators for their home matches. Yet you have to say, if a club cannot stave off relegation from the Top 14 elite in France with an average gate of 12,000, then who can?
Montauban, the Division 2 Champions will be promoted with one of four remaining clubs: Dax, Auch, Albi or Beziers. Now it is important to remember Toulon's budget figure here, €7.1 million.
For the fact is, of those ambitious clubs seeking promotion, Beziers have a 5.5 million budget, the Champions Montauban 4.5m., Albi 3m., Dax 2.8 and Auch 1.7m.
What on earth, we are surely entitled to ask, would be the point of these small clubs being promoted with their modest finances? Simply to be cannon fodder for the wealthy giants?
Of course, we have long since known the identity of the four teams battling it out in this weekend's Championship semi-finals: Toulouse, Biarritz, Stade Francais and Perpignan. The first three are sure to be there next season, too.
Because French club rugby has become like its English counterpart. Three or four teams are in a class of their own because they have by far the most money. This suggests very clearly the future likely scenario of rugby in this part of the world. The pressure for an elite within the elite will grow.
It seems increasingly likely to me that in the years to come, a European Super League will come to the fore.
It will contain the strongest financially from every country, perhaps four each from France and England, two each from Ireland and Wales, and a single representative from Scotland and Italy.
The fourteen richest sharing the lion's share of the sponsors' purse.
Tradition, sentiment, the notion of looking after old friends in difficult times? I'm sorry, but rugby football quietly buried those elements the day it signed on the dotted line for professionalism.

We have always been able to produce world class playeres up here.

[ding dong2u]

Isn't that why greedy Blanco wants a bigger share of the pie so they can buy in more foreign imports