Imagine if, as a result of the failed Super League project, a trade-off was promised to the breakaway group.
Here’s the deal. From 2024, the Premier League would be divided into category clubs. The big six — Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham — would be Category A. And Category A clubs, no matter where they finished, could not be relegated.
Also in Category A and immune would be those getting an average gate of 40,000 or more, like West Ham, Newcastle and Aston Villa. This makes nine clubs who, no matter how poorly they performed, could not be demoted, and 11 who could.
As for promotion, this would also be subject to external factors. Not just points, but Category A potential.
Reading, Burnley and Queens Park Rangers might be in the play-off places, but in terms of gate figures those clubs are 21st, ninth and 19th. So what about Sunderland, Middlesbrough and West Brom instead? They have Category A capacity.
And it’s a horrific plan, obviously. Slices at the heart, and soul, of sport. It’s an idea that nobody with any feeling for athletic competition could countenance, the blueprint of accountants and money men, masquerading as a vision. Yet it’s here, and it’s now.
Detailed above is the rough sketch proposed by IMG for rugby league. Just put Wigan and St Helens where Liverpool and Chelsea would be.
IMG undertook a six-month review and this is their ‘reimagining’ of the sport in this country. A competition in which the elite are exempt from failure and clubs are graded into categories by metrics on and off the field. It sounds far-fetched. How can a pyramid system thrive and capture imaginations without open competition? Yet here is the proposal in question:
‘Participation in the top tier to be based on a range of on and off field measures, delivered through a club grading system with the aim of supporting financial sustainability and encouraging investment into clubs.
‘“Category A” clubs will be guaranteed participation in the top tier whilst “Category B” clubs will be re-assessed annually with the highest-ranking clubs occupying the remaining slots in the top tier. Promotion and relegation will continue on the field of play between the second and third tiers.’
So there it is. Conventional promotion and relegation between the Super League and Championship will end in 2024 when a body — IMG, presumably — will decide who fits into which category and splits the sport accordingly.
It is expected there will not be enough Category A clubs to fill the Super League, leaving some in jeopardy from relegation, while others will be secure.
Why bother with a sport at all then? Why bother with actual matches if all that matters are commercial considerations, crowds and revenue?
See how many can be dragged into a stadium in Widnes and if it’s more than they get at Warrington, Widnes win. All the sport seems to be doing is interfering with IMG’s metrics. And amazingly, the 37 professional and semi-professional clubs look set to vote the recommendations through on October 13.
They must be desperate. Not just to agree to a format so harmful to true competition, but to allow IMG to implement a glorified franchising system.
This season, four of the original founders of the Northern Union in 1895 — Leigh, Batley, Halifax and Widnes — were in the Championship. Imagine football proposing that clubs such as Blackburn, Bolton, Preston and Notts County were barred from entering the Premier League, even if their ranking merited it.
One of the reasons football’s Super League failed so spectacularly was that fans despise a closed shop. Manchester United were relegated in 1974, Tottenham in 1977, Chelsea in 1988, Manchester City in 2001, yet no true fan of those clubs would support a system in which their team could never go down.
The Super League as good as promised it, and was reviled. One of the banners at the famous demonstration outside Chelsea read: ‘We want our cold nights in Stoke.’ And to get a cold night in Stoke, first Stoke have to be allowed to play in the league. Not just if they fit the commercial profile selected by IMG; if, quite simply, they are good enough.
For that’s the great lie being perpetuated here. That the Category A criteria will ensure professional standards. League positions are the indicator of professional standards. Is there a more professional club in football right now than Manchester City? Probably not. And if there is it will be a club with considerably inferior resources that is punching above its weight: like Brighton. Let’s not kid ourselves that IMG are about nurturing the rugby league equivalent of Brighton.
IMG say their gradings will be ‘objective, easily measurable, reliable, transparent and valid’, and easily measurable means numbers. Commercial wealth potential, crowd potential, investment potential. It is hard to evaluate whether Reading are doing a better job than QPR, but any fool can see Sunderland have the promise to be bigger than the pair put together. And that is the part of the business that IMG know.
Yet most of what we can now see coming, rugby league has tried before. Evaluating off-field performance was abandoned in 2014, licensing and franchising was ditched, too; and no doubt there will be another attempt to monetise the capital city and London Broncos.
Yet unless rugby league followers are very different from those in other sports, they will like jeopardy, they will like the dream of moving through the pyramid, the thought of playing Batley or Widnes again one day; and they will like all of sport’s little wrinkles and rainbows. The stuff the money men can never understand.
Arrogant Wales have no right to interfere with Bale's club in the US
Quite a few clubs must be very grateful that they were not suckered into acting as Gareth Bale’s World Cup training camp.
What an expensive and thankless role that is turning out to be.
After a disappointing performance against Poland, Bale’s first 90 minutes in over 12 months, Wales manager Rob Page is now planning talks with Los Angeles FC to make sure his talisman is in peak condition for the World Cup.
No doubt that means more than the two starts Bale has had so far, most recently against Minnesota United on September 14. Even more troublingly, with Bale on the pitch, Los Angeles have a -7 goal difference, as opposed to +35 without him. Despite this, they are top of the Western Conference.
So what right do Wales have to interfere with a successful team, to treat them as if their priority should be Bale’s readiness for Qatar, not their own domestic fortunes?
It is extreme arrogance, not least because Los Angeles are paying his wages.
If Wales want to get Bale ready for international football, they should foot the bill; otherwise, butt out.
Soon he'll be on his Todd
What began as Todd Boehly understandably wanting his own team in the leading executive positions at Chelsea has developed into a bloody month of the long knives.
Everyone is out, from the physio, to the doctor, to the head of communications. Chelsea were the European champions little more than a year ago. They can’t all have been incompetent.
Bloated World Cup will serve no one except FIFA
Having inflated the World Cup to 48 nations in 2026, FIFA had no idea what to do with it.
Their first plan involved 16 groups of three teams, but that would leave the final round of fixtures open to a carve-up between the last teams to play. If there is one thing FIFA know about, it’s bent deals, so that schedule is now abandoned.
Instead, we’re back to groups of four, but four into 48 equals 12, or 24 if the top two teams qualify, and neither number makes for a convenient knockout round. So now the top 24 will go through, plus eight lucky third-placed losers.
It will mean countries, and their fans, hanging around without a clue where they will go next in a tournament spread over three North American countries with complex entry conditions.
Also, it will take 72 matches to eliminate 16 of 48 teams — with two thirds progressing. Third-placed teams at the 2018 World Cup in Russia included such luminaries as Saudi Arabia, Iran, South Korea and Tunisia, and no third-placed team had a positive goal difference with the overall aggregate standing at -11. Only FIFA think bigger is better, because all they care about is money.
Denmark kit will get people talking
There is no garment that is going to make a true difference to those who have been forced into near slavery by the demands of Qatar’s World Cup. It is too late now.
Yet the blank shirts designed by Hummel for Denmark — without so much as a badge or logo truly visible — are the most dramatic statement yet. The most meaningful of the meaningless protests.
When Denmark play in plain black — or even plain red, or plain white — this will be discussed in commentary, and the message will reach a fresh audience. ‘The colour of mourning,’ was how Hummel described the black kit. ‘While we support the Danish national team, this shouldn’t be confused with support for a tournament that has cost thousands of people their lives.’
Meanwhile, if you remain in any doubt about the risk FIFA have taken with the millions travelling to Qatar for the World Cup, search for the name Marc Bennett, a former executive at Qatar Airways, and consider the mystery surrounding his tragic death. You may also wonder why more hasn’t been made of it here.
Mankad victim Dean was sloppy
Several days after the match, and England’s cricketers were still whingeing about India’s Mankad dismissal of Charlie Dean to win the third one-day international.
Heather Knight, England’s captain, disputed India’s claim that Dean had been warned about straying from her crease while backing up. Kudos then to Peter Della Penna of ESPN Cricinfo, who painstakingly rewatched Dean’s innings and revealed that she had left her crease early on 72 occasions, prior to bowler Deepti Sharma’s decision to break the stumps.
This amounted to 85 per cent of all balls bowled with her at the non-striker’s end, equivalent to five balls in every over. Della Penna also discovered Dean rarely looked at the bowler’s hand before departing and, on occasions, did not even have her bat grounded.
She was sloppy and taking liberties so, on the 73rd occasion, India ran her out. Whatever the required niceties, it was long past time for a warning.
Embrace the new and the old
The biggest loss in modern life is the ability to compromise. It should never have been a choice between the finals of new competitions for schools and universities and the two oldest fixtures at Lord’s: Eton versus Harrow and the Varsity match.
All can co-exist. Embracing the new shouldn’t mean expelling the old, certainly when it is the history of Lord’s that makes it so special.
MCC members who fought for their reinstatement should be lauded; those who could not see that compromise was the way forward should be ashamed.
Maguire wrong to dismiss criticism
Harry Maguire believes criticism of him amounts to clickbait. The irony being that if online media wanted to devise a way to drive people to their sites, they would have Maguire passing the ball directly to Germany’s most skilful player, and then tripping him in the penalty area with a tackle that redefines clumsiness. And Maguire did that on Monday all of his own accord.
So whoever has told him legitimate criticism is clickbait is doing him no favours, because Maguire needs to rediscover his game, not open up a second front with the press.
Gareth Southgate says he needs Maguire to be playing regularly and with confidence, and nobody disagrees. There were no bad words about Maguire when he was playing well for England; he became a cult hero.
Unavoidably, though, form and confidence have deserted him and stating that very obvious fact is not the way to get clicks. If any writer wanted to mine controversy as a way of promoting web traffic, a better plan would be to advocate for Maguire to start in the team.