After shock football exit, Dominic McKay makes return to rugby union
Dominic McKay has returned to rugby union in a major role following his brief stint as Celtic chief executive.
McKay has been appointed interim chairman of European Professional Club Rugby, which organises the Heineken Champions Cup and Challenge Cup tournaments.
The Scot left Celtic on September 10 after 10 weeks in the post of chief executive, with the club citing personal reasons for his shock departure. He had moved from the Scottish Rugby Union to Glasgow slightly earlier than planned, in mid-April, for a handover period ahead of Peter Lawwell’s retirement.
McKay spent 13 years with the SRU, latterly as chief operating officer, and was also chairman of PRO14 as well as being a former board member of Rugby Europe.
McKay will take up the position immediately following the completion of Simon Halliday’s two terms of office.
He said in a statement: “I am delighted and humbled to be asked to chair the EPCR board and I very much look forward to working with all our stakeholders across Europe as well as with the board and executive team in Lausanne to further develop the Heineken Champions Cup and EPCR Challenge Cup in the months ahead.”
EPCR board member Mark McCafferty said: “Following the new EPCR agreement concluded in April, we are now entering an exciting era for Heineken Champions Cup and EPCR Challenge Cup rugby beginning with December’s opening rounds of matches.
“There are many initiatives under way to build on the success of the tournaments and on the passion of the clubs, players, fans and partners participating in them.
“So we are delighted at this time to have someone of Dominic’s calibre and experience joining us, and I am sure we shall benefit from his strategic and leadership skills.”
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The only benefit of the draft idea is league competitiveness. There would be absolutely no commercial value in a draft with rugby’s current interest levels.
I wonder what came first in america? I’m assuming it’s commercial aspect just built overtime and was a side effect essentially.
But the idea is not without merit as a goal. The first step towards being able to implement a draft being be creating it’s source of draftees. Where would you have the players come from? NFL uses college, and players of an age around 22 are generally able to step straight into the NFL. Baseball uses School and kids (obviously nowhere near pro level being 3/4 years younger) are sent to minor league clubs for a few years, the equivalent of the Super Rugby academies. I don’t think the latter is possible legally, and probably the most unethical and pointless, so do we create a University scene that builds on and up from the School scene? There is a lot of merit in that and it would tie in much better with our future partners in Japan and America.
Can we used the club scene and dispose of the Super Rugby academies? The benefit of this is that players have no association to their Super side, ie theyre not being drafted elshwere after spending time as a Blues or Chiefs player etc, it removes the negative of investing in a player just to benefit another club. The disadvantage of course is that now the players have nowhere near the quality of coaching and each countries U20s results will suffer (supposedly).
Or are we just doing something really dirty and making a rule that the only players under the age of 22 (that can sign a pro contract..) that a Super side can contract are those that come from the draft? Any player wanting to upgrade from an academy to full contract has to opt into the draft?
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You’ve got the perfect structure to run your 1A and 1B on a quota of club representation by Province. Have some balance/reward system in place to promote and reward competitiveness/excellence. Say each bracket has 12 teams, each province 3 spots, given the Irish Shield winner once of the bottom ranked provinces spots, so the twelve teams that make up 1A are 4 from Leinster, 3 each from Connacht and Munster, and 2 from Ulster etc. Run the same rule over 1B from the 1A reults/winner/bottom team etc. I’d imagine IRFU would want to keep participation to at least two teams from any one province but if not, and there was reason for more flexibility and competitveness, you can simply have other ways to change the numbers, like caps won by each province for the year prior or something.
Then give those clubs sides much bigger incentive to up their game, say instead of using the Pro sides for the British and Irish Cup you had going, it’s these best club sides that get to represent Ireland. There is plenty of interest in semi pro club cup competitions in europe that Ireland can invest in or drive their own creation of.
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