What is happening to club rugby?

[Wowbagger]

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/sep/22/premiership-rugby-champions-cup

It seems that the Heineken Cup is in its death throes.

I'm always very wary of this sort of commercial development in sport: it's not about improving the standard of play, it's just about making more money for a small cartel.

Is English football any better as a result of the formation of the Premiership? Will British rugby benefit from what appears to be a new elitism?

[mcshroom]

English Rugby below the Premiership has been damaged quite considerably by the clubs at the top. Being a Rotherham Titans fan I may be a little biased^[1], but having rules that allow less finding to new clubs in the Premiership, don't actually confirm promotion until well after the end of the season and ground requirements that established Premiership clubs don't have to meet but new ones do before being allowed up has made the league an effective cartel with it being nigh on impossible for the promoted club to do anything other than get beaten all season and then get relegated at the end of it.

They've also tried to remove promotion and relegation altogether a few times in the past.

[1] We've been denied promotion after winning the Championship twice, held up a third time until a month after the end of the season before they would agree to let us up on a third occasion and were the only club of the 12 not to receive funding for our academy in one of the years we were in the premiership. In the end our owner and financial backer left the sport entirely in disgust, and he had played the game all his life.

[Biff]

Honest q. Has the influx of money been detrimental to the League? (I was a wet bob, not a rugger bugger so am only a casual observer).

[fuzzy]

I am not a rugby fan- I prefer Association football but, I wonder if it is the professionalisation of the game that has had a determental effect on the game as a whole.

I guess that the game being professional has had a very positive impact on the top clubs but not so good on the lower tiers.

[pcolbeck]

The quality of rugby in the top tier has gone up. Always happens when things go professional as players can devote themselves full time to their sport. What doesn't always follow is that its good for a sport as a whole.  A gulf opens up between amateurs and professionals and as more and more money flows in between those in the top flight and those in lower leagues. Just look at how hard it is for teams to stay in the football premiership now as they get promoted from the championship.
It also doesn't always make a game better when the technical ability of the players increases. A good game is simply one where there is reasonably even competition, both sides do their best and there is some tension.  Increased skills can make a game worse as anyone who watches a premiership game where one team decideds just to shut the game down and go for a draw knows.

[mcshroom]

The leagues were a good idea, as before rugby was entrenched in certain clubs that had agreements to play each other rather than being more meritocratic. Unfortunately the way that the leagues at the top have been structured, even more than in football, have solidified an elite set of professional clubs and prevented other clubs from having a look in, so after a few years of real gains for English club rugby, it feels like the trap door has been effectively sealed shut for the Premiership cartel again.

I think the standard of rugby in the premiership has improved though I agree.

[Peter]

I wonder how long it will be before the rugby premier mimics the soccer one in it's irrelevance to the locality?  I saw that my team (Newcastle) didn't field a single British player on Saturday.  All that foreign "talent" and we still got beaten.  I am more relevant to Newcastle than any of its players.  How long before, say, Quins is composed entirely of New Zealanders or South Africans?  My years of supporting Newcastle suggest that the standard of play will not necessarily improve.