Salary Cap allegations have potential to damage credibility of the English game
For the Irish Times, published Wednesday May 6th 2015. A few words about the importance of sticking to the rules, and being seen to. Especially in this new, strictly meritocratic European rugby world.
It’s easy to throw around war metaphors when writing about sports, especially territory-based games like rugby. Some years ago my brother was flatmate to a sniper. Nice bloke. Razor sharp mind. Didn’t blink. A former Croatian soldier, having retired from the sniping game he’d travelled to Finland to study. A man who knew about war. Real war. It puts things in perspective.
During last season’s great power battle for control of European club rugby it seemed that every Thursday or Friday afternoon another Premiership chief bottle-washer would take their turn at the diplomacy megaphone.
Insults and jibes were lobbed by all sides across various bodies of water and for a time there seemed a very real possibility that European rugby as we’d grown to know it would never be the same.
Time thankfully moves on. And with the first season of the Champions Cup era in the books, we had top level rugby action and a gripping final. Blue and yellow ribbons fired out of the cannons instead of the red of Toulon? Unfortunate, as indeed was the free ticket fiasco. But in general, things are moving forward. Good enough, you’d think. But there could be messiness ahead.
