MAGNERS LEAGUE LAUNCH:EXPANSION ON the pitch and expansion off it was the theme of the Magners League launch in Cardiff yesterday.

In tandem with the arrival of the two Italian teams, Treviso and Aironi Rugby – which has seen an increase in the number of matches from 93 to 135 – the chief executive of both the Six Nations and British and Irish Lions, John Feehan, has been appointed CEO of the league.

The tournament will hence now be managed out of the same Dublin office in charge of both the Six Nations Championship and the Lions, and Feehan will head up a team that will include 10 permanent members of staff, including the long-standing tournament director, David Jordan.

These initiatives were approved at a Celtic Rugby Board meeting in Cardiff yesterday morning.

In a sense, it is not unlike when Roger Pickering combined a similar portfolio as CEO of the Lions, the then Five Nations and the ERC in the early days of the Heineken Cup. The presence of Feehan and his staff should, in theory, offer the league more commercial clout (witness the improved Six Nations’ television deal from €2.5 to €17 million in the last round of negotiations), improve decision-making and also lighten the hitherto excessive load on Jordan.

“It’s a positive development for us,” said Jordan. “As a tournament we have grown in size and stature over the years but from a resource point of view we’ve needed to invest in that, with the addition of the two Italian teams, the advent of the play-offs – which were a great success last season – and the awards dinner. With all these things the Celtic League needs to add resources to continue its improvement.

“There’s a skills set and an experience in the Six Nation and Lions office that we can take advantage of and obviously from a rugby point of view there’s an experience we can integrate with and help drive our tournament forward.”

Jordan will now effectively be dealing with Feehan, as opposed to the Celtic Board chairman, John Hussey, whose seven-year tenure comes to an end on September 1st when he is succeeded by the former Scottish international fullback Andy Irvine, who is also chairman of the British and Irish Lions committee.

The structure of the new organisation will include a board of eight voting members (two from each participating union) plus the CEO, tournament director and the finance director in a non-voting capacity. The board will also have a non-voting chairman.

On the eve of the league’s 10th anniversary campaign, the Italian Pay-DTT broadcaster, Dahlia TV, were yesterday confirmed as the league’s seventh television broadcasting partner in a four-year deal. The second largest player in the Italian Pay-DTT market, Dahlia TV will broadcast at least 19 of the Aironi Rugby or Benetton Rugby home matches during the season as well as the Grand Final.

RTÉ is set to broadcast up to 40 live Magners League games this season and will be covering the tournament alongside TG4, who will also be broadcasting matches involving Irish provinces, both home and away, every weekend. Matches will also be shown on BBC Northern Ireland, BBC Cymru Wales, S4C and BBC Alba in Scotland.

With the advent of these seven television partners, 85 per cent of the game will be on TV, with 97 per cent of those on terrestrial stations. The changed off-field structure could also be timely given the title sponsors, Magners, are coming into the final year of their current deal.

With the expansion comes challenges, not least with regard to the standards of refereeing and disciplinary measures. Alas, the latter are likely to remain under the remit of the relevant home unions – a deeply unsatisfactory situation, even if, as with sending three-man teams of officials abroad, it’s understandable given the additional costs of a league based in four different countries – but Jordan concedes it’s an issue that needs addressing.

“That’s an example of the sort of thing that we need to start looking at. We want to move (the disciplinary procedures) to a more independent process and this will give us the opportunity to do that,” said Jordan, albeit more likely a year down the road.

“These things take time but the idea is to look at all aspects of the tournament and the way we handle discipline is a very clear example of the sort of thing that we’ll look at. It doesn’t matter how correct your disciplinary processes are, there’s always this perception that there’s bias in the system.”

Maintaining crowd attendances, and continuing growth in this area, will be more challenging with the advent of Italian teams and more free-to-air television coverage, all the more so as the additional four rounds of matches have been accommodated on international weekends in November and the Six Nations.

“A lot of our teams now have a loyal support base,” said Jordan, who maintained that attendance figures withstood the disruption caused by last winter, during the normally bumper festive period especially, and the resultant rearranged midweek matches.

Yesterday’s launch highlighted the presence of 280 players from 14 different countries in the 12 competing squads, although it’s as much the aspiring young internationals and back-up players who will help maintain both crowd size and teams’ performances on the pitch.

“There’s a skill set and an experience in the Six Nation and Lions office that we can take advantage of and obviously from a rugby point of view there’s an experience we can integrate with and help drive our tournament forward