Sporting MPs

For some unknown reason, apart from my own strange sense of curiosity, I decided to take a look at who represents' the UK's top flight professional teams in Football, Rugby Union and Rugby League.

The thirteen UK clubs in Super League have ten Labour MPs, with the Liberal Democrats at Harlequins and Leeds and the Conservative at Warrington as the exceptions.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Aviva Premiership twelve clubs has half of the clubs in Conservative seats (Exeter, Gloucester, London Irish, Northampton, Saracens and Wasps), with the Lib Dems at Harlequins, Leeds and also Bath and then three Labour MPs at Newcastle, Sale and Leicester.

The Premier League is all Labour, with the exception of Fulham and Chelsea, and to my surprise Wolverhampton who all have Tory MPs. Presumably there would be more Tory MPs further down the leagues, but I think that these will still be in the vast minority.

In terms of constituencies fielding BNP candidates, 11 out of the 13 Super League constituencies had a BNP candidate and one of those that didn't, East Hull, had a National Front candidate. Half of all the Premier League constituencies had a BNP candidate and five out of the 12 Aviva Premiership candidates. All this shows is that Rugby League areas are more likely to have the under-represented white working class voters that the BNP appear to target. Stoke City's constituency had the percentage highest BNP vote, with Bradford Bulls in second place.

What does this show? Not a lot really, perhaps I could say that it underlines the importance of Middle England which is not an actual geographical location and also that for the 80 or so constituencies that make up the Football League (only 17 in the Premier League), that there are about 450 who aren't counted in this. For every Stretford and Urmston (home of Manchester United), there is a Pudsey, Folkestone and Hythe, Brentwood and Ongar, Broxbourne and Cannock Chase. Football and Rugby League have their routes in traditional working class areas and this is reflected in the political make-up of these areas.

Would a new elite level rugby league competition work?

When the Super League was first mooted in 1990s, the idea of it was to raise standards in the sport, both on and off the field. There is evidence to show that this was successful, the number of people watching sport at the top level has increased vastly with around six clubs averaging crowds of five figures, many teams play in vastly improved stadia and the dominance of Wigan which preceded Super League gave way for more teams winning the league and cup competitions. However, Kyle Eastmond is the latest of a line of league players to go to rugby union (though these have been to varying degrees of success), people argue that the salary cap is stifling the ability of players to be able to earn to their full potential and also there are many critics that a Super League of 14 teams yields too many low quality and low intensity games, which fail to give England / Great Britain players (save the couple in the NRL) the edge over Australia and New Zealand.

My idea is like an extreme version of Super League, with a bit of ‘Super Rugby’ (sic), Indian Premier League and Major League Baseball thrown in. The elite European competition would be:

• Six regional teams in, for the sake of argument, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Wales, London, Midi-Pyrenees and Paris – with scope for future expansion.
• Super League would revert to only British teams and no longer be a closed shop, the French teams would play in the French league.
• The elite competition would draw it’s playing staff from the English and French competitions – a season of 10 games in the Elite League would allow players to play for their domestic teams, but only for a limited number of games – with the Elite competition gaining absolute priority.
• The domestic clubs would pay the wages of Elite players but would be compensated when players played for Elite clubs. Domestic clubs who developed players in their academy would also receive some payment.
• No salary cap would apply in the Elite League as such but a ‘luxury tax’ where teams paying over a certain threshold would have to pay a tax which would go back into grass roots.
• Luxury Tax threshold would be raised if a team had more local players
• The domestic league would be decided on a first past the post basis, with the Elite Grand Final being the major final at the end of the season. Challenge Cup Final would still be in August.
• Players would be drafted to each team by an Indian Premier League style auction, though after the first season there would be more encouragement for teams to retain players than in the IPL.
• Players who didn’t put themselves forward for selection would be penalised by missing out on significant salaries and ability to play in internationals.
• The quality of competition would hopefully attract a significant TV rights deal to pay for all of this!

What would it mean for Rugby League?

Ideally, such a league would represent a more marketable product for broadcasters and sponsors, it would be a ‘sexy’ product and it would encourage more new supporters into the fold and also encourage more children to take up playing the game. Conversely, it could be shunned by supporters who see these franchise teams as having little identity and difficult to support. Rugby League may be more susceptible to parochialism than the IPL and an elite competition would ultimately fail if there was no appetite for it from supporters. It may be less able than the IPL to command the amounts of money that would be acceptable for players to be flying from the North of England to the South of France to ply their trade five weeks a year. If such a competition failed, it would probably be very difficult for rugby league to recover.

For at least half of games, clubs would be without their star players. This happens in rugby union to some extent when internationals are played alongside club fixtures, but not to an extent of half the players going missing. There would be less prestige in the big club occasions and there could even be a danger that the domestic leagues are ‘cannibalised’ by a successful Elite competition, but so long as a club link remained, club supporters may turn out to see Elite players playing at a club near them.

Domestic rugby league would no longer be a ‘closed shop’ at the top level; promotion and relegation would hopefully allow more interest in the second tier domestic competition. There is a danger that clubs will go to the wall and bust a gut trying to stay in the top flight, but if the clubs spend high wages on star players, they would be guaranteed money back when that player is drafted to a regional team. This could do what the original Super League proposals failed to do and ensure that rugby league still has strong links to its heartland communities; the likes of Featherstone and Whitehaven could still play in the top level domestic competition on merit.

International rugby league would improve. Intense games week-in, week-out would give British and French players experience of playing in games of a high intensity. The development of star players and the promotion of a game to a wider audience, and hopefully a more credible international competition, may increase attendances and television audiences for the international game.

So would this ever happen?

The above 800 and odd words are amongst the most pointless things I’ve ever written, because I think this would never happen. The media corporations are unlikely to take rugby league that seriously to pay significant sums of money and the supporters would be unlikely to lend their support / money / time to a competition that was devoid of identity, or at the very least history.