No, not the world famous RL competition, but a plan for the top European 11-a-side teams to split off and form a closed shop competition.
Much rage:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/56794673
What I don't get is
- why clubs shouldn't be allowed to choose to move to a different league if they want to, why should they be legally prevented?
- how can UEFA say they will stop players playing for a national team? How can they say that player X plays in the wrong league and therefore can't play for their country?
It's a bit like when Packer's cricket teams split off. UEFA/FIFA couldn't stop anyone playing in another league, but as the natinal sides play in FIFA/UEFA competitions, then those bodies are entitled to state the entry criteria for their competitions.
- why is everyone so piss-scared of a league with no Promotion/Relegation? P/R is an alien concept in many countries (Oz/US) and doesn't work for many sports in this country (Rugby of either code).
This is plainly false for Rugby Union. The top two sides this season were Bristol and Exeter. Both teams that have been promoted in recent years. Newcastle and Worcester are other teams that have come up from lower divisions, so a third of the Premiership have been promoted into it.
This is despite the rules being set up in such a way as to try and stop the promoted teams doing well. I remember when my team (Rotherham) got promoted, we had to meet a range of ground criteria that existing clubs such as Bath didn't have to, got less TV money for playing in the Premiership than Harlequins got for playing in National One that year, and had to wait well after the season finished before we were confirmed as promoted, so after most player transfers had occurred. As it was, we got smashed for a season and then went down, which wasn't great, but at least we have played Premiership Rugby.
Removing promotion and relegation just entrenches the haves and have-nots in a sport. In Rugby Union, that would have been that the whole of the North of England was represented by Sale, for example. In RL, it would have also cemented teams with a rich History such as Halifax and Widnes out of the Super League, and made it pretty much impossible for the sport to spread out of a narrow band of England based mainly around the M62.
There may be a case if you went to regional teams like the Irish in the Pro 14, but just using existing big clubs entrenched privilege