Another barmy idea from the men in suits

The Ministry of Silly Walks was a Monty Python sketch which lampooned bureaucratic inefficiency. Rugby Union requires something similar to shame the unaccountable administrators turning our sport's prized tournaments into wastelands.

“The Ministry of Crap Competitions” sounds about right, based on the plans mooted this week for a World Club Cup, which advocates the barmy notion that the European Cup and Super Rugby be curtailed at the quarter-final stage every fourth year.

The big idea is to put the top eight clubs from the North and eight franchises from the South into an inter-hemisphere 16-team World Club Cup, with a four-week inaugural tournament to take place in Europe in June 2028.

It downgrades the European Cup to a feeder competition so the likes of Saracens, Toulouse, Leinster and the Stormers get to play against the Crusaders, Brumbies, Fijian Drua, and a couple of Japanese outfits like the Panasonic Wild Knights.

To make it an even bigger and more costly exercise, those who fail to make the top 16 will play simultaneously in a Super Challenge Cup, possibly consisting of another 16 teams. This dwarfs the 20 teams who attended the 2023 World Cup in terms of travel costs and logistics.

Which broadcasters, airlines, hotel chains and title sponsors are interested in backing this new World Club Cup venture is unclear. How many fans it will attract given the massive costs they face to follow World Cups and Lions tours is unknown. The costs/benefits to the participating teams is also undisclosed.

This critical thread was taken up by Rob Baxter this week, when the Exeter director of rugby, said that clubs like his have to be convinced it is a “genuinely viable” financial proposition, not one based on vague future promises.

The push for an even busier global season should be of grave concern to World Rugby, the Six Nations, and SANZAAR – especially given that their new biennial Nations Championship kicks-off in 2026.

According to the Nations Championship schedule there will be international summer series matches taking place in July 2028, and you don't need to be clairvoyant to predict that a World Club Cup in June will spark a club-country clash over player release.

The World Club Cup has apparently been discussed at board level by the Premiership, URC, Top 14, and Super Rugby Pacific (SANZAAR). The first three organisations are core participants in European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR), and they should think very carefully about continuing to undermine their own flagship tournament, the European Cup, any more than they have already.

The Round of 16 introduced last year is an ill-conceived mess which has killed the coherence and drama of the pool stage. In two years of this knock-out ‘filler' round we have had a total of 16 fixtures, 15 of which have been won by the home side. La Rochelle, who won by a single point against the Stormers in Cape Town last weekend, are the only side to record an away victory.

Teams playing home knock-out fixtures against opponents they have just met in the pool – as happened to La Rochelle, who had to play the Stormers away twice, and Saracens, who were battered twice in Bordeaux – does not come close to matching the drama that the old home and away pool format generated.

The self-inflicted vandalism has now reached its nadir. The suits in the Premiership, Top 14, and URC have placed so little value on European club rugby's crown jewel that they are prepared to trash the legacy of a tournament which, for the best part of 30 years, has produced rugby for the gods.

Clubs who have given their all to reach the summit and earn the title ‘Champions of Europe' will be forced to watch as their achievement – and the kudos that came with it – is dismantled by the decision to erase the knock-out stage every fourth year.

Why turn a tournament which has been a shining light into a dud, and replace it with an unproven World Club Cup concept so full of holes that it should have remained on the drawing board until they were plugged? A competition think-tank with any sense would work on a prototype World Club Cup first. At the moment the only practical option is a final between the European and Super Rugby champions on the last Saturday in June.

This idea has been kicking around for decades, and it has not come to fruition because of fixture congestion – and the financial and logistical barriers to arranging a date for a single inter-hemisphere club final, let alone a month-long new tournament.

It remains an awkward proposition, but the reworking of the international calendar has left a small window of opportunity. For example, this season the Premiership final is played on June 8, while the URC and Super Rugby finals are scheduled for June 22, and the Top 14 final for June 28.

If the French moved their final to June 22, and the Premiership to June 15/22, the ducks would be in a row for a first World Club Cup final on June 29. As for possible venues, Tokyo or Johannesburg are close to equidistant between North and South.

Rugby Union should learn to walk before it runs, and this option can test the feasibility and appetite for an expanded World Club Cup.

Much more important, it preserves the integrity of the European Cup – which, even with its unwanted Round of 16 lead weight, is still by far the most successful club tournament in the global game.