Premiership clubs want to be consulted by the Lions before tours are drawn up and given a say in the schedules, arguing that next year’s 10-match trip to New Zealand is unfair on the players.
Clubs in England and the Pro12 have no say in the organisation of a Lions tour and they want that to change. The agreement with New Zealand, Australia and South Africa runs out next year and negotiations for an upgrade will not properly get underway until the international tour schedule from 2020 is worked out.
The Lions leave for New Zealand next year before the Premiership and Pro 12 finals, while the Top 14 final is being played on the weekend of the opening match of the tour. If Toulon are involved again, it could affect the Wales full-back Leigh Halfpenny, a match-winner in Australia in 2013.
“It is going to be very difficult next year,” said Mark McCafferty, the Premiership Rugby chief executive. “It is a punishing schedule and I do not know why it was signed up to. Ten games over that period is a lot and there will be difficulty for players coming off that tour going into the 2017-18 Premiership.
“The Lions is in the mix as we move towards the season structure post-2019. It is a fabulous brand and an important part of the economics for the southern hemisphere. It should carry on but it is not sustainable that players can go through a club and international season, be involved in that scale of a tour and be in shape for the following season.
“People involved in the Lions need to listen. No one is operating in a vacuum and wWe have got to sit down and talk. Do you need to play that number of midweek games when the economics are driven off the back of three Tests in the main? Nothing can be done about next year but then the agreement will be up and things need to be worked out.”
The Wasps director of rugby, Dai Young, who went on three Lions tours and captained the midweek side in 2001, agrees with McCafferty. “I am a big supporter of the Lions and that tour should never be taken away from players because it is special,” he said. “I am surprised the finals are being played so close to the tour and the organisers should have sat down and talked about the dates. The Lions are not the big brother in this relationship: we should be working together in this rather than one telling the other what will happen.”
At the end of a week in which the former Sale scrum-half Cillian Willis instigated legal action for negligence against the club after allegedly being allowed to play on after being knocked out, McCafferty said he did not believe it would be the first of many cases. “I cannot comment on the Willis case but we have done a phenomenal amount of work in the past two or three years on the management of concussion risk and concussion incidents,” he said. “Education programmes have changed the culture and I am confident we are moving in the right direction in handling this.”
