Brendan O'Brien
GUINNESS PREMIERSHIP or RaboDirect PRO12?
Both have their critics and cheerleaders, not least the English competition which is supported by the bucks and bling of Sky Sports. Yet the question as to which is better – or worse, depending on your viewpoint – trundles on.
Everyone remembers Ronan O’Gara’s comments five years ago. The Ireland out-half was quoted claiming the English league was overhyped and its players overrated and his comments were all the more incendiary given the date of their publication. Munster were on Heineken Cup duty at Welford Road days later and, though O’Gara backed his words up with a sensational winning penalty, Leicester got their revenge in the New Year by ending Munster’s proud European unbeaten record in Limerick.
Others have echoed O’Gara’s words since.
Welsh flanker Martyn Williams castigated the Premiership in May of 2010 when England was left without representation in the Heineken Cup semi-finals for the first time in seven years. Too many set-pieces and not enough invention was his bottom line. Add to that Warren Gatland and former New Zealand scrum-half Justin Marshall, both of whom have experience on both sides of the Severn Bridge and who either talked down the Premiership or talked up what used to be the Magners League.
The list goes on and on. On both sides.
What’s interesting is that the Top 14 rarely enters this debate, as if the French are a law onto themselves, but a recent study on the impact of professionalism on European rugby by the UCD Centre for Economic Research makes for interesting reading.
All three leagues go about their day-to-day business in very different ways. Two have promotion and relegation, one doesn’t. Two have (very different) salary caps, one doesn’t. One operates revenue sharing, two don’t.
Add to that extravagantly different funding models, operating budgets and structures and any like-for-like comparisons aren’t easy but, looking at the study, it appears to these eyes that little separates the Big Three.
One barometer used was the percentage of close matches (ie, those won by seven points or less). The Premiership finished highest in that category and the Celtic League bottom but the difference was just 3%
In terms of the “dynamic competitive balance”, or number of different winners to you and me, the Celtic version finished top but even that finding glosses over the fact that there hasn’t been a new name on the trophy since Ulster’s in 2006.
Statistics, eh? It was a Prof. Aaron Levenstein who famously said they are like a bikini in that what they reveal is interesting but what they conceal is vital. That much is true when it comes to the Irish question here.
The Heineken Cup is the obvious common ground on which to compare and contrast and the Celtic League doesn’t do well in terms of its percentage of pool matches won with its 46.6% a good 10-12% down on the other two.
Ireland’s percentage? A table-topping 60.4. The highest of any country. It’s not exactly news that the provinces are punching above their weight but it proves yet again how reliant the Celtic League and Heineken Cup actually are on them. Leinster and Munster in particular.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/q02wC6P6ro0/post.aspx
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