R360 makes correct diagnosis but proposed cure is unproven | Andy Bull

03/06/2025 18:22

It will take a lot of money, which may well be forthcoming, and much more besides to realise plans for new global league

There is one passage in the sales pitch for R360, rugby union's new breakaway league, everyone ought to be able to agree on. "Clubs around the world are feeling the strain, and are being propped up by the international game," the proposal goes, and it is true there is not a single team in the Premiership making a profit, seven of the 10 owe more than they own. Worldwide, at least 12 professional sides have gone out of business in recent years. It is just a shame about the rest of it, which has more holes than Newcastle's defence.

R360 is brought to us by the team of Mike Tindall, Stuart Hooper, whose management career at Bath was one seven-year lesson in the Peter Principle that organisation's tend to promote people to the point of their incompetence, player agent Mark Spoors and John Loffhagen, who had a 13-month spell as the chief legal adviser for LIV golf. Their idea is to create two new superclub competitions, one between eight male sides, one between four female sides, which would sit above the club structure. They would compete in a 16-match season in two windows from April to June and then August to September, with rounds taking place in a different city each week.