da
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/ ... 349012.ece
Italians look at Magners League for a little drop of inspiration
Italian clubs could be on the verge of asking to join the Celtic Magners League after further Heineken Cup embarrassment Lewis Stuart
Italian clubs could be on the verge of asking to join the Magners League, the main competition for Celtic professional clubs. They meet in Bologna on Friday to plot a way forward for the game in their country after
another weekend of Heineken Cup embarrassment and poor performances by the national side last month. Joining forces with the Scots, Welsh and Irish in a European super league is high on the agenda.
The move yesterday received enthusiastic support from Franco Smith, the Treviso coach, after his side flopped against the Ospreys in the Heineken Cup for the second week running. A number of other significant figures in Italian sport also support the idea, including Nick Mallett, the Italy coach, who first raised the notion in his review of the autumn internationals.
David Jordan, the tournament director of the Magners League, said yesterday that it too would welcome the idea, though he warned that there is still much work to be done to turn it from an outline plan into a detailed proposal.
“Celtic rugby has always said it would be willing to consider any proposal from the Italians,” he said. “Until we actually have that proposal, and they tell us exactly what they want to do, we are not in a position to evaluate it. We would need a detailed submission and there are a whole host of implications — fixtures and scheduling, commercial, financial costs of travel to Italy, television and a number of other factors.”
Those issues mean that even if the Italians do decide to pursue the Celtic option, they are unlikely to have anything in place quickly enough for it to happen next season, and
the earliest that they might realistically join would be the 2010-11 season. There is a basic willingness on behalf of the Celtic countries, however, to give the idea a sympathetic hearing. The option has been doing the rounds for four years, since proposals for a Rainbow League, involving teams from South Africa as well as Italy, briefly flared and quickly died away.
The last time the possibility of the Italians joining forces with the Celts came three years ago when the Welsh were on the verge of being thrown out of the competition after signing up for the EDF Cup, the Anglo-Welsh tournament. If they had been ejected, the plan was that the Italians would be invited to take their places.
The likely proposal from Italy would be that they enter four teams into the Celtic League, though
they have yet to decide if they would be new regional outfits similar to those that represent the Celtic countries, or if they would be based on the best of the existing clubs.
The biggest problem for the Celts would be trying to fit Italian teams into the fixture list. All three countries in the league are desperate to keep the international windows free of domestic commitments, which eats up ten weeks in the season. They need to keep another nine clear for the Heineken Cup, so fitting in 26 weeks for the league would be impossible.
The biggest gain would be that the Italian clubs all seem to be flush with money.
Access to the market in Italy, which is about four times the size of the three Celtic countries combined, would also expand the league’s profile and make it far more attractive to sponsors and investors.
“There is certainly a willingness to listen to whatever proposals they want bring,” Jordan said. “There cannot be any guarantees, but we are certainly willing to have a serious look at it.”
Italian rugby officials have realised that they are making slow progress in bringing their domestic league up to European standards. Treviso, the best of their sides, conceded 15 tries in the two legs against the Ospreys and
Smith was in no mood to compromise afterwards. “Italian teams entering the Magners League is a necessity,” he said. “It’s negative to have sides from Italy playing in a competition like the Heineken Cup and just losing every week.” At the same time, recent changes in the rules about when clubs are forced to release players for international duty have increased the pressure on all the leading countries to make sure that their players are performing at a high enough level, while still being based in their native country and under the control of their home union.
