A case study in hypocrisy

So we’ve been quiet for a while, but have been prodded from our torpor by yet another magnificent example of be-blazered idiocy.

When Heidelberger RK (HRK) beat Timisoara Saracens in April, they qualified for the European Shield final. They lost that final to Enisei-STM of Russia in Bilbao last month, but guaranteed their place in next season’s European Challenge Cup.

Their achievement is significant. They would become the first German team ever to play in one of the top two tiers of European competition.  World Rugby has long aimed to develop the game in countries which have not traditionally embraced it, and the appearance of a club from a new country – to join previous entrants from Russia, Romania and Spain – is welcome.

HRK are one of only two professional teams in Germany. They are funded by the Swiss businessman Hans-Peter Wild, who has enabled the club to develop impressive facilities and to recruit the former Saracens and England lock Mouritz Botha as head coach.

And it is Hans-Peter Wild’s involvement which has jeopardised HRK’s place in the tournament. Because Wild, in addition to being the main financial backer of HRK, is also the majority shareholder of French giants Stade Francais, who have also qualified for the Challenge Cup. Tournament organisers – European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR) – have decided that because Wild

“…would be in a position to influence or to control the management or performance of two clubs in the same competition, EPCR decided that the German club could not participate. A replacement club will be announced shortly”.

So HRK have been thrown out of the competition – for which they qualified – without even taking the field because EPCR are concerned that two clubs with the same financial backer/owner playing in the same competition could leave the competition open to manipulation.

Which, on the face of it, seems reasonable enough. Except this is far from the only example.

Club teams in Wales (well, three of the four), England and France are privately-owned. They receive payments from their Union for the development and release of players for Test duty, and in some cases competition participation monies are passported through their Unions, but they are independent.  Their Unions cannot tell them what to do – beyond the terms of formal agreements (such as, in Wales, the Rugby Services Agreement) – and do not benefit directly – in financial terms – from their performance in domestic and European competitions.

Professional teams in Scotland and Ireland are owned by their respective Unions. Let’s take Ireland.

IRFU accounts suggest that the four professional provinces are entirely owned and controlled by the IRFU. The bulk of the wages of the professional players plying their trade in Ireland appears to be met directly by the IRFU.

The IRFU is able to dictate where a player should play. South African scrum-half Ruan Pienaar was forced to leave Ulster in 2016 by the IRFU. He wanted to stay, Ulster wanted him to stay, but the IRFU were concerned about the lack of emerging Irish-qualified scrum-halves and directed Ulster to release him, which they did. Yesterday, Leinster fly-half Joey Carbery moved to Munster in a move widely interpreted by Leinster fans as having the IRFU’s fingerprints all over it.

The IRFU also employs referees. Welsh supporters have long railed against the fact that Pro14 games between their team and an Irish province which – due to the paucity of quality referees emerging from Scotland and Italy – are often officiated by Irish (and sometimes Welsh) officials.  We even had the ludicrous situation in October 2015 – according to BBC Wales’ Scrum V, at least – of the IRFU’s Gary Conway travelling with the Munster team on their team bus to officiate at a Scarlets-Munster match in Llanelli.

The scope for perceived conflict of interest here is obvious.

The IRFU benefits financially from the success of the provinces it owns.  It employs referees who officiate games which affect Irish provinces. This can be direct in the case of Irish officials taking charge of matches involving Irish teams, as in the Pro14.  It can also be indirect in the case of IRFU-employed referees officiating games between two non-Irish teams in Europe which could nevertheless impact on an Irish team’s chances of progression.

Now, I doubt anybody would seriously suggest that IRFU-employed match officials would attempt to change the course of a match to the benefit of an IRFU-owned team. Indeed, Pro14 chiefs – and others, including Professional Rugby Wales (PRW) – have long argued that clubs view referee neutrality as a nice-to-have, but secondary to the competence of the referee and their support team. In the case of Gary Conway, above, his performance in that game was erratic and sometimes baffling, but he eventually awarded a penalty to the Scarlets right at the death which Steve Shingler kicked to win the game.  Which would have made for a tense journey home on the team bus.

But – to paraphrase a current refereeing catchphrase – what of materiality?

Are Stade Francais and Heidelberger RK really likely to manufacture a situation between them which could be of benefit to one or the other? Stade Francais will be among the favourites for the Challenge Cup. HRK, frankly, will not, and their focus would doubtless be on maintaining respectability.  If it is vanishingly unlikely that HRK could find themselves needing a favour from Stade Francais to progress, it is even less likely that HRK could thump a major team to allow Stade Francais to qualify for the knock-out rounds. While there is doubtless some conflict of interest, it’s virtually impossible to imagine how that could come into play.

The Irish situation is very different. There is a very obvious conflict of interest and yet rugby administrators at Pro14 and EPCR level are strangely reluctant to address it. Why?

There is a long-standing suspicion among some supporters that rugby teams in the Anglosphere are treated differently to teams who are not. From referees who don’t bother to learn enough French or Spanish or Italian to be able to converse with players from those countries (and Argentina, of course), to discrepancies in suspensions handed out for violent play, to the treatment of Unions who break the player eligibility rules (and, in this, I mean that Wales and Scotland got away with playing ineligible players in the late 90s while Spain and Romania have been thrown out of the next World Cup for a similar transgression).

No doubt the excuse would be that the Irish provinces are rugby bodies, while Stade Francais and HRK are clubs, and therefore different regulations apply. It’s also the case that World Rugby regulations cover ownership of clubs, and therefore there is a conflict of interest in this case.

Why the Irish provinces are bodies and not clubs, though, isn’t so clear. Perhaps that’s something Wild might want to take further…

It is, of course, pure sophistry. Either multiple teams with the same owner playing in the same competition is ok, or it isn’t. There is no credible argument that the situation in Ireland and Scotland is ok, while the Stade Francais/HRK case isn’t.  A bit of honesty and consistency wouldn’t go amiss here.