It will not be formally announced until next week but it now seems increasingly certain that next season’s Guinness Pro12 tournament will be expanded to include two teams from South Africa.
Hinted at over recent months it became a done deal in all but dried ink once Super Rugby confirmed that two of its six South African teams would no longer be part of their competition with immediate effect.
That left the prospect of the two playing no competitive rugby for a year and losing all their players or looking North rather than South and joining forces with the best of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Italy.
The Pro12 will so become the Pro14 and while we will wait to see what this looks like in terms of fixture make up and the impact on local rivalries and derby games until next week there are plenty of rumours swirling around to amuse us until then.
An obvious one is that the League will now be split into two divisions of seven.
If that is on the US basis of equal strength groups feeding into a play off series than it is likely that the four Irish provinces, whose derby games have produced the biggest levels of interest and attendance in recent years, will be split up.
Playing home and away games against your division rivals would produce a fixture list of 12 games and adding one game against each of those in the opposite division would bring it to 19, still three short of what was the full fixture list of 22 last season.
Given longer travel time that could well be a necessary trade off and it could be made up by having a longer post season of a ‘Super Four’ teams playing a round robin in order to qualify for the Final. That though would favour the strong at the ever greater expense of the weaker teams and with a possible further expansion towards the US likely in the next three years that might not work.
TV rights will rise with the addition of the South Africa market, perhaps by as much as €6 million which would be a significant upward spike in the tournaments commercial revenue. While much of that would be sucked up by accommodating the greater travel expense of playing in the southern hemisphere at least there will not be problems of jet lag and crossing time zones.
Reaction to the proposed expansion is as yet premature and there has been no official comment from any of the irish Rugby provinces or authorities, as is right until such time as the full picture becomes clear.
It is the case though that change is coming as it always does. The Pro12 has become more vibrant in recent years but a strong Champions’ Cup against the best of England and France has always held more of an attraction and being second best in sport in any format is never a comfortable place.
Writing in the IRFU Annual report last week Treasurer Tom Grace laid down a clear marker saying that:
“There are still very real challenges facing us in the Rugby economy not the least of which is player cost inflation.”
“This is driven by the relative financial strength of the leagues operating in England and France compared to the Guinness Pro12.”
“With the appointment of a CEO for the Pro12 together with a dedicated support team a substantial effort is being made to address this deficiency and the next twelve months will give us a clearer understanding of the future of the competition.”
We will have to wait one more week to see what those next twelve months look like.
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