If there was a European Super League...

[hookender]

I was discussing this with a friend last night. Personally I think it is inevitable. Our thoughts were a three Tier league consisting of the following:

16 Top 14 sides
13 Premiership sides
4 Irish provinces
4 Welsh Regions
2 Scottish sides
2 Italian sides
Franchises from: Spain, Portugal, Romania, Georgia, Netherlands, Russia, plus one more side to be determined.

Three leagues of 16, based on merit. Each side plays each other home and away, with a four team playoff at the top of League 1 to decide the champions.

With promotion and relegation, we'd have the bottom two clubs from Leagues 1 and 2 playing the top two sides from the league below (11 v 2, 12 v 1) home and away with the aggregate winners playing the following season in the higher league.

Maximum 32 games and what should be a good mix of matches. Imagine the away trips to start with in League 3!

Could be the way forward for European rugby to go forward but would still have problem of relegation/ no relegation below 3rd tier, especially for french. Problem also would be re salary capping?  Also how would it work with Irish / Welsh central contracts and internationals?

[HDAWG]

I don't really see how rugby could compare, if anything we already do this to a certain degree due to the competitions in place.

In football you have teams you doing pretty well against all odds (Leicester winning the premier League being the finest example). Rugby don't have too many situations like this.

But then football has relegation in pretty much all leagues. Rugby has this in England and France. Not Pro14 for example. Then even when some teams are promoted they don't qualify due to stadiums etc. Which shows just how little the leagues change.

So yeah.... If anything rugby is a series of leagues that don't actually experience anything like football in terms of little teams making incredible league long performances. Completely different sports in completely different situations at a CLUB level. I feel like football having FA cup, League cup etc help teams have miracle moments (this wouldn't be applicable in rugby though, no. matches etc.).

International though.... Stuff like the six nations and championship make me argue it's already happened.

[baldpaul101]

well that's all over then, till the next time.
Rather sad how the football owners caved in so quickly when the going got a bit tough, you'd think they would have anticipated the reaction and would be made of sterner stuff.

[Neils]

It certainly hasn't gone away. I suspect it will start in Europe as many clubs are financially up shit creek. There was a bucket load of money apparently behind it.  No wonder Sky was going apeshit with DAZN financially behind it. Now they have spare money to spend on rights issues. I am sure CVC could be interested in discussing matters.