Deadline looms for Anglo-Welsh league plan

England’s elite clubs and the four Welsh regions have signed contracts for a 16-team Aviva Premiership from next season and will announce their intentions on Friday.

The revelation that both parties have formalised their proposed alliance after months of negotiations comes just six days before another deadline runs out in the escalating crisis over Europe.

The regions have given the Welsh Rugby Union until Friday to support the more profitable European competition proposed by the English clubs, the Rugby Champions’ Cup.

In return, the Blues, Dragons, Ospreys and Scarlets will be prepared to stay within the Union but only if the Unions cede control of the tournament to the clubs.

The breakaway from the Pro12 to the English League is a contingency plan should endless rounds of talks fail to find a compromise solution aimed at reuniting Europe. Those talks were said last night to have reached ‘a very delicate stage,’ just as they supposedly were three months ago.

The ‘constant dialogue’ between the RFU and Premier Rugby Ltd will continue this week in the hope to avoid what one source called

‘the nuclear option’ – English clubs and Welsh regions launching an outlawed competition in defiance of their Unions.

Cardiff Blues chairman Peter Thomas underlined the need for radical change last night during an impassioned interview with The Rugby Paper in which he called for the removal of the WRU hierarchy.

“The regions have offers on the table to play in the Champions’ Cup or a British and Irish Cup,” he said. “For God’s sake, the Irish, Scottish and Welsh Unions have to wake up and make a decision.

“If they don’t do that by the 31st of January, we have to move on. Why? Because we have no alternative but to move on for the sake of the players, the supporters, the investors and Welsh rugby as a whole. The product we have in the Pro12 is not selling. To be blunt, we don’t have a product. We are in the wrong competition.

“The WRU are not making any decisions. With them it’s all about control. They don’t look at the bigger picture. They couldn’t run a corner shop.

“They should not be in the positions they have been elected to be in. It’s time for this lot to move on and time for other people on the WRU, like Gerald Davies, to stand up.

“If nothing has changed by the first of February, we shall look at our options and we do have options.”

If the regions join an Anglo-Welsh league it would plunge the British game into turmoil. The ramifications, not least over the release of international players from many countries with England hosting the World Cup next year, provide compelling reasons for averting such a crisis by solving the European Cup issue.

The cold war between the WRU and the regions has become colder still with the Union’s attempt to sign six regional players on central contracts. After failing with Leigh Halfpenny and Alun-Wyn Jones, they succeeded with Sam Warburton yesterday. The Wales captain, left, who will miss next week’s opening Six Nations defence against Italy, signed for the WRU on a contract worth £300,000 plus.

The governing body plan to lease Warburton back to Cardiff Blues outside of international fixtures.

Warburton said: “I am delighted to commit my future to Welsh rugby.”

WRU chief executive, Roger Lewis, added: “Welsh rugby cannot stand back any longer and watch its best players leave Wales. We all have to act together in the best interests of the game.”

If the WRU did follow through their threat to liquidate the regions if they persist in refusing to sign a modified version of the vexed ‘Participation Agreement,’ it remains to be seen where Warburton would play his club rugby. England’s PRL have a rule forbidding their clubs to engage Union-contracted players.

The WRU’s central contracting policy has been condemned as ‘dumb’ by the Union’s former chief executive David Moffett.

“They have gone into competition with the regions for their players. The agents of those players have said: ‘That’s terrific. Now we’ll get more money for our clients’.”

Moffett, on a self-proclaimed crusade to rescue Welsh rugby, is to stage a series of meetings at rugby clubs next month under the banner: “Time For Change”.

PETER JACKSON

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