European rugby bosses are reportedly pushing for a long-awaited world club championship to start next season.
That would mean that the current seasons of the Guinness PRO14, Gallagher Premiership and Top 14 could be used to determine the qualifiers for the new tournament.
According to i, European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR), the organisation that runs the European competitions on behalf of the Premiership, Pro14 and France’s Top 14, envisages a World Club Champions Cup to be played once every four years.
The proposed tournament would see the planet’s best 16 teams – eight from the northern hemisphere, eight from the south – playing in a single five-week block starting in the middle of April 2022 through to a final on the weekend of May 14.
To avoid adding fixtures to the already crowded calendar, it is reported that the new tournament would replace the knockout stage of next season’s European Champions Cup.
The northern eight would be this season’s winners of the Premiership, Pro14, Top 14 and Champions Cup, plus four top-ranked finishers from the 2021-22 Champions Cup pool stage.
The eight next-best Champions Cup teams would move into a “Super Challenge Cup” round of 16 with eight clubs from the Challenge Cup.
As for the means of selecting the southern hemisphere teams, that would depend on a revamp of Super Rugby.
“All of the leagues of the northern hemisphere would love it to happen and I think there is real enthusiasm in the southern hemisphere,” Simon Halliday, chairman of EPCR, told i .
“All stakeholders are talking about it – World Rugby, the southern hemisphere, ourselves. Anything that is ‘world’ and fits into a longer-term agreement needs consultation, which is what we are doing.
“The general working assumption is it would be up in the north first time round."
Ben Kay, the Leicester Tigers director and England World-Cup winner who is a pundit for BT Sport’s coverage of the Champions Cup, told i : “We always compare Super Rugby and northern-hemisphere rugby, and to get an opportunity to see that would be fantastic.
"We have had a few exhibition games with Saracens playing South African teams, and the second string of touring international sides playing against Premiership teams. To do it in a live competition would be hugely exciting.”
