Comparing Stade-Racing merger to Barcelona-Real Madrid joining pretentious - Lorenzetti
Likening Racing 92's controversial merger with Paris rivals Stade Francais to fierce foes Barcelona joining with Real Madrid would be "pretentious", insists Racing chairman Jacky Lorenzetti.
The French giants, who have 20 domestic titles between them, stunned the rugby world by announcing their decision to amalgamate into one team in Top 14 next season.
It is a bombshell that has been met with shock and it remains to be seen what the future holds for the squads of both teams as the two giants become one.
Stade lock Pascal Pape tweeted to say "my sadness is so great", while team-mate Hugo Bonneval merely posted "13/03/2017: END."
Paul Gabrillagues expressed his shock on Facebook writing: "It's not a merger, it's the acquisition of Stade Francais by Racing.
"This is the death of our club."
However, Lorenzetti insists that the decision will ultimately be the right one for rugby in Paris and was quick to dismiss the move is on the same level as the idea of Spanish football rivals Barca and Madrid joining together in LaLiga.
"The starting idea is positive," he told a news conference on Monday. "It is to think that we will do much better together.
"I'm not going to do any comparison with Barca or Real, it would be far too pretentious.
"But we'll have two clubs merging, we have the youngsters in our academies, it is very ambitious.
"You can see things positively instead of saying 'one club is disappearing', no it will be an amazing club.
"If we don't make any mistakes, it will be an amazing club and we strongly believe in it with [Stade president] Thomas Savare."
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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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