Prem Rugby needs a draft, but not one for the very best players
Top flight domestic rugby is back this weekend in the form of the Prem Rugby Cup – the former Anglo-Welsh, British and Irish, and inter-Prem/Champ competition that is now just a little bit of a nothing league. But that’s for another day.
Because the return of rugby in England feels underhyped. We’ve had an entire summer of international rugby in the southern hemisphere – which is ongoing with the South Africa series against New Zealand – but up here it has been extremely quiet.
How would I generate noise if I was at Prem Rugby towers in Victoria? I would bring in a draft system. It would create buzz in the height of the summer and give fans something to look forward to between the last and next seasons.
But I wouldn’t do it like The Hundred, where the very best players are up for grabs, and I wouldn’t follow the US where mega-deals are done for youngsters that are playing at an equivalent level for youth that rugby couldn’t even fathom.
Ballsed it up
I completely ballsed up my A-Levels and, long story short, I had to leave a Harlequins academy set-up to go to Durham University – who saw something in my rugby despite my grades – to ensure I had a back-up plan should my career be short.
There will be hundreds of young rugby players who may find themselves in the same, or similar, positions. And a draft for graduating uni lads, maybe not quite good enough to announce themselves onto the scene like Henry Pollock at 18, to get back into the top flight of the game could be the solution.
Current pathway rules give each of the main clubs a catchment area for talent, but that ends if players go to university and aren’t signed up at a club with a link to the Prem – such as Bedford Blues and Northampton Saints, or Hartpury College and Gloucester.
Is a draft daft?
A draft for graduates would allow those who go to university to invest in their education, contribute to the deeply impressive Bucs university programme – which has birthed countless rugby stars including Alun Wyn Jones (Swansea) and Alex Dombrandt (Cardiff Metropolitan) – and have a shot at a full career later down the line.
It would be simple: the bottom-placed side from the previous year’s Prem Rugby season gets the first pick and the sequence works its way up the table. These will be players hungry to get back into top-flight sport and they’ll be picks who clubs have had to scout and see space for.
The reality is that the Champ feels ostracised, and unless there is better cooperation between that league and the one above it then it is hard to see how players get scouted en masse and tested at the highest level.
It would be great to see a draft in rugby union, and in the Prem specifically, but it should be one that taps into a part of the rugby landscape that isn’t already diluted. University students are that, and we should find a way of ensuring we don’t lose talent due to ignorance or lack of trying.
Former England Sevens captain Ollie Phillips is the founder of Optimist Performance. Follow Ollie @OlliePhillips11