LOOK NORTH
The Welsh footballer Gareth Bale was this week sold to Real Madrid for £86m. His wages are reported to be £300,000 after tax in a deal that turned his parents into millionaires after he gave them a 20% stake in his company.
Bale's rugby union equivalent in Britain is another Wales international, George North, who cost Northampton £200,000 when he joined from the Scarlets in the close season. He will earn from his club in a year around what Bale pockets in a week.
The domestic rugby season starts this week with little of the fanfare that clotted the buildup to the football campaign. Last week's launch at Twickenham was low-key with much of the attention lavished on the gimmicks BT will employ having secured the extensive television rights to the tournament.
There was no mention of the unresolved dispute over the future of the Heineken Cup which, as it stands, will cease to exist at the end of the season. While the arguments about how many teams should take part and whether there should be a uniform system of qualification are resolvable, two issues are likely to extend the negotiations well into the new year.
The first is the split of the money which, under the current accord, is essentially divided six ways, representing the number of countries who take part in the tournament. By looking to place an emphasis on leagues, as the English and French clubs are, a three-way carve-up, under the figures produced by Premiership Rugby if BT secured the broadcasting rights, would enrich the Premiership and Top 14 clubs while providing the RaboDirect nations with a modest increase.
It would give the clubs enhanced spending power at a time when the Celtic unions, Wales and Scotland in particular, are struggling to hold on to players. Ireland have managed to dissuade the vast majority of their leading internationals from going elsewhere in the last decade, aided by government tax incentives, but the loss of the Heineken Cup would compromise them financially.
The second obstacle to agreement is the television contract. European Rugby Cup Ltd last year secured an extension with Sky after the French and English clubs has given their two years' notice. Premiership Rugby subsequently negotiated a deal with BT, selling cross-border as well as domestic rights, something the RaboDirect countries maintained it was not allowed to do.
The nub of this, and it is worth dwelling on in the week of the season's opening round of matches because of the potential implications of a continued impasse, is that some of ERC's stakeholders have yet to grasp that there is, as it stands, no Heineken Cup next season. Without an agreement, how can Premiership Rugby be in breach? International Rugby Board regulations allow clubs to negotiate television deals with the consent of their union, something the Rugby Football Union has not said it has refused.
The French and English clubs can survive without financial support from their unions. That is not the case with the Welsh regions, the Irish provinces or Scotland's two professional sides, not least because they cannot escape from the RaboDirect.
Premiership Rugby knows that and, by giving little ground in negotiations, it is pushing the Celtic unions towards the edge of the cliff. Only at the point they start to look down will there be any chance of a resolution, but if they come to accept the thrust of the demands of the English and French clubs, meritocracy, the Irish and Welsh in particular would come under pressure from their professional sides who would be less amenable to resting their international players from league matches.
That is another reason why the English and French are keen for change. If the Welsh regions have made little impact in Europe, not least because economic restraints have left them short of depth, as was shown on their benches last season, the Irish provinces, Munster and Leinster especially, have been pre-eminent.
Were they forced to field their strongest team throughout the season, the argument goes, they would have to spread their resources more widely rather than focus on the Heineken Cup. The question for the Premiership clubs, at a time when a number of them are pressing for a rise in the salary cap, is whether, when it comes to it, they are prepared to sabotage the Heineken Cup and risk alienating some of their supporters (unless they come up with a tempting alternative).
The RaboDirect organisers are looking for a new sponsor for next season and the loss of the likes of North will hardly help them. The Welsh Rugby Union has provided its four regions with a one-off payment of £1m to help stop the exodus which, if it continues, will undermine the Welsh Rugby Union's policy of hosting a fourth international every November to raise revenue.
Toby Faletau has signed a new deal with Newport Gwent Dragons, but Leigh Halfpenny and Jonathan Davies are in the last year of their deals with Cardiff Blues and the Scarlets respectively, while the Blues are also negotiating with Sam Warburton. Until a new Heineken Cup agreement is signed, the WRU will have to budget carefully.
North will be a major attraction in the Premiership and Northampton look their strongest since returning to the Premiership. Alex Corbisiero was another key player for the Lions, but the Saints' shrewdest signing may be Kahn Fotuali'i, the Samoan scrum-half who joined from Ospreys. Lee D1ckson will not surrender his place in the side meekly, but Fotuali'i is a nine in the French mould, very much a tactical hub.
Northampton's weakness until last May was their record against their rivals in the top four away from home, but their emphatic play-off semi-final performance at Saracens should be a catalyst. Dean Richards, director of rugby at Newcastle, said at the launch that he expected the leading four to shrivel to three with Harlequins falling back to the chasing pack.
Quins will miss James Johnston and both Saracens and Leicester look to have more depth, but what the 2012 champions have shown since the days when Richards was director of rugby at The Stoop is a greater consistency and resolve, together with real team spirit. Their withering away seems wishful thinking.
WILL THE SCRUM STILL BE A SCAR?
One subject debated at the Premiership launch was the new scrum law, which has been designed both to take the hit out of the engagement of the two front rows and to restore some old values to the set-piece, such as putting the ball in straight and hookers striking for the ball.
The Leicester director of rugby Richard Cockerill, a former hooker, was not optimistic it would make any significant difference. He lamented that club coaches and front-row forwards had not been consulted, but the change was three years in the making and involved experts from all over the world, including Cockerill's former team-mate and the England forwards coach, Graham Rowntree.
While the scrum has become a scar on the game at the top level, although not underneath it, with reset following reset as front rows that do not achieve the hit ensure that the opposition does not get good attacking ball, the remit behind the change is player welfare. It is not a southern hemisphere plot to send the scrum the way of its rugby league counterpart.
By changing the engagement sequence so that no movement is allowed until the ball is put in, it is estimated that the force will be reduced by some 25% and will lead to fewer collapses. In the past hope, as in the case of the law that required defenders to stand five metres behind a scrum, has been thwarted by experience and referees should be encouraged to have a low-tolerance threshold when it comes to binding offences.
As the Northampton and Dylan Hartley observed at the launch, a generation of hookers has grown up that has never struck for the ball at a scrum. Will they be encouraged to do so now or will the fear be of an eight-man shove against the team putting in the ball?
The opening two rounds of the Rugby Championship have shown that there will be a settling-in period. Where Cockerill has a valid point is that those directly involved should, as the season progresses, be asked for feedback because whether it works will ultimately be down to coaches and players.
CONSISTENCY IN REFEREEING CRUCIAL
That is not to forget referees. If there is one wish for the season is that there will be more consistency and a move towards objectivity. The Lions tour to Australia showed how subjective refereeing has become.
The three officials were markedly different in their approach. Chris Pollock, who controlled the first Test, had a markedly different approach to the breakdown, and less so the scrum, than Craig Joubert, who took charge of the second.
What was disconcerting was that both Pollock and Joubert, when they ran the line the week after their matches, were quickly in the ear of the referee, pointing out infringements they did not penalise the previous week, as if they were reacting to their assessment.
Given that there is now a list of referees for Test matches between tier-one nations, it is not too much to expect that there would be some collective consistency, not a growing disparity.
FIVE TO WATCH THIS SEASON
Billy Vunipola (Saracens)
He is hardly a newcomer after breaking into the England squad with Wasps, but his progress this season will be significant for England who, after Ben Morgan's injury in the opening match of the Six Nations, lacked a ball-carrying presence in the back row. It was a contributory factor behind their poor try rate in the last four matches, just one. Saracens, with their team ethic, should push Vunipola to the maximum and widen his boundaries.
George Ford (Bath)
It would have been easy for Ford, given that he is still only 20, to have stayed at Leicester and continued to understudy Toby Flood, but he is only 18 months younger than Owen Farrell, who has had two seasons with England and been on a Lions tour. Bath have struggled to make an impact in recent seasons, but with Ford, Kyle Eastmond, Jonathan Joseph and Anthony Watson in their back division, they have firepower. Ford seemed to stall in his final season with the Tigers but he has the same spark as Freddie Burns.
Jack Nowell (Exeter)
Full-back is one of the positions that the England head coach Stuart Lancaster will be looking for more options in and Nowell's performances in this year's Junior World Cup earned him selection in the Saxons squad. He can also play in the centre and on the wing, where he appeared for Exeter last season, one of five Chiefs players who were part of the victorious Under-20 side this summer. His instinct is to attack and England are stockpiling an impressive arsenal.
Jamie Gibson (Leicester)
One of several players to have left London Irish this summer, Gibson will have to contend with Julian Salvi for the open-side position at Welford Road, but at 6ft 5in he can also play on the blindside. Gibson is highly effective at the breakdown, quick and strong, and he chases strongly, putting pressure on opposition kickers. He has given up a regular place at the Exile at a key point in his career having been on England's tour to South Africa last year, but he is a player who seems a natural for the Tigers, determined to learn and ferociously committed.
Rhys Patchell (Cardiff Blues)
Fly-half is the one position that Wales do not have nailed down with Rhys Priestland missing most of last season with an achilles tendon injury which also ruled him out of the summer tour to Japan. The 19-year old Patchell was called up and won two caps from the bench. Taller than the average 10, he has a strong kicking game, an eye for a break and he is an accurate goal-kicker. While he will no longer have rarity value, he is composed under pressure and his maturity belies his age. It will also be interesting to see how Munster's fly-half JJ Hanrahan develops in the post-Ronan O'Gara era.
STILL WANT MORE?
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