R360 would have to find a new audience

THE build-up to the Premiership play-offs was hijacked by a global franchise competition that is being planned for next year.

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It would involve eight men’s teams and four women’s sides. Called the R360, it would be played between April and September with a break in July, which is when World Rugby’s global nations tournament starts.

It was reported last week that team owners from football’s Premier League, Formula 1 and the NFL had submitted bids to buy franchises, that 40 players had been offered contracts worth £1m a year and that a number had signed contracts contingent on the finances being in place.

The former England centre Mike Tindall, below, is part of the organising team, as is Stuart Hooper, who captained Bath and then became the club’s director of rugby, with the aim of transforming the club game. Each round of the 14-week season would be played in a different city in various countries with big capacity stadiums hired.

There is little chance of World Rugby sanctioning the plan because it conflicts with an already congested calendar. And it is not the first time the concept has been floated with attempts to get one off the ground made in the 1980s and the 1990s.

The attempt in 1995 by the Australia media mogul Kerry Packer, who the previous decade had successfully organised a rebel cricket tournament, although it proved short lived, to establish the World Rugby Corporation very nearly succeeded.

That year the World Cup was held in South Africa. When it ended, WRC had signed up a number of the leading players in the world to take part in a global tournament with the top performers commanding more than £100,000.