United Rugby Championship exploring draft system to improve competition
By Chris Jones
BBC rugby union correspondent
The United Rugby Championship changed its name from the Pro 14 in 2021
The United Rugby Championship is exploring a form of draft system to improve competitiveness across the league.
Italian side Zebre lost all 18 games this season as they finished bottom of the table in consecutive seasons.
Leinster topped the table after the regular season and only lost twice - including the semi-final to Munster.
Chief executive Martin Anayi says the URC needs to "think laterally" about improving the weaker teams' standards.
"There might be an ability to draft in players from the other unions who aren't getting game time," he told BBC 5 Live. "That is 100% [a conversation]."
One of the biggest defeats Zebre suffered this season came at the hands of the Bulls, who beat them 78-12. The Dragons, who finished second from bottom, only managed to win four games from 18.
Anayi says a lack of jeopardy at the bottom of the table is a result of a "closed league", one without promotion and relegation.
"There is a natural filter system to relegation, one team goes down and the team that comes up is full of expectation because they have won the league below; we don't have that in a closed league," he added.
"Our job is to find ways of helping the likes of Zebre and the Italian Federation to make them more competitive.
"In American sports they have a system for doing that, the draft system. We don't have that, so we need to think a bit more laterally about that question.
"Ireland have so much talent they are trying to work out how does everybody get game-time, while Scotland have two teams so that creates a bottleneck for them.
"So those are avenues we are trying to explore. We are setting up a high-performance think-tank to help us with that question, from a league-wide point of view.
"Zebre has been at the bottom of our table for a wee while and we need to try and do something to help them."
Anayi says there is enough collaboration to ensure a draft system could work, without concerns from other unions about improving rival teams.
"We have that collaboration at union level. They see the league is better and more commercially viable if all the teams are competitive," he added.
"And secondly they want the Six Nations to be competitive. Our unions can see that helping Zebre is a good thing both for the league and also for the Six Nations."
'League needs different winners'
Leinster have dominated the league in recent years, winning four titles in row between 2018 and 2021, but that monopoly has been broken over the past two seasons.
While the Dublin-based team only lost once in the regular campaign, they were beaten in the semi-final by Munster, a year on from losing a last-four meeting against Bulls.
"They have been beaten twice in play-off format in the URC, and that's what we need, not for Leinster to be beaten, but to have jeopardy," Anayi added.
"We are going to have a team that isn't Leinster winning it [for the last] two years, after they won the previous four.
"I think it's good to see a different name on the trophy each year."
Stormers host Munster in this year's showpiece, in front of a sell-out crowd in Cape Town, with Anayi praising the impact of the South African franchises on and off the field.
"They have just been great for the tournament," he said.
"And it's built in South Africa too. [At first] they didn't know what URC was, they didn't know what the Champions Cup or the Challenge Cup was, but we've seen the Stormers build from 20,000 [attendances], to 30,000, through 40,000 and now we have got our first sell-out of 57,000.
"It's been an amazing couple of years."
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