European Cup crisis: The boycott is a disaster for players and fans, and it's hard to find winners in the present mess, writes Gerry Thornley.

How could the shining light of European rugby, the Heineken European Cup, and with it the estimated €28 million the ERC will generate in direct pay-outs for the six founding nations, be jettisoned? To the vast majority of supporters out there it takes some understanding. And as with all the problems in professional rugby over the last 11 years, at its core is the never-ending power struggle between the English and French clubs and their respective union and federation, to which mix one can throw in vanity, egotism, stubbornness, scheming and incompetence.

The root problem, cited by both Premier Rugby and la Ligue Nationale de Rugby, the umbrella groups for the dozen English Premiership clubs and the 14 French first division clubs, is supposedly the reneging by the (English) RFU on an agreement reached in October 2006 to give Premier Rugby half England's shares and voting rights in ERC, following the French and Italian models.

The RFU categorically deny any such agreement was reached. Yet somewhere in the ERC files in Huguenot House there must be recorded minutes of any shareholders' meetings, which could verify whether such an agreement was reached. As it has become such a vexed issue, it warrants clarification.

Why has this shares/voting rights issue become so important? Serge Blanco, the legendary former French fullback, is the driving force behind the LNR's recent militancy, and nothing would have alarmed him and his English club counterparts more than reports the RFU were trying to introduce a central contract/franchise system in England akin to that operated by the Celtic nations and the Southern Hemisphere big three.

Although a development in England was always unlikely given so many players are contracted to the clubs, in theory it would leave the French clubs isolated globally. Hence Premier Rugby's demands for an equal voting/shares rights with the RFU in the ERC would safeguard them against any putative franchise system in England.

This issue is part of a wider, ongoing dispute between Premier Rugby and the RFU with regard to elite-player management, and the RFU won't budge on the vexed share/voting ERC issue without agreement on the other. Nor will they be dictated to by Blanco.

In the background lurks another football test case in which the European Court of Justice will rule on a case brought by a Belgian club, Charleroi, contending clubs are not obliged to release players for internationals.

It is being watched eagerly by Premier Rugby and the LNR.

The unholy Anglo-French club alliance has obviously been planned with military precision, for Premier Rugby could not, legally, have decided to boycott the European Cup without the French first having done so under the terms of their Long Form Agreement with the RFU, in which they were obliged to remain in the ERC-run competitions for another two seasons.

"There is not a chance of us giving up any shares to PRL," vowed Martyn Thomas, chairman of the RFU, this week. "How could you allow people who behave like this to hold shares in the Heineken Cup?" How indeed.

Yet one can also understand Premier Rugby's grievances over the RFU holding all the English shares and voting rights for a tournament they do not participate in, especially as the French Federation president, Bernard Lapasset, had offered the French clubs almost half of the FFR's (16.5 per cent) shares in the ERC.

Throughout the whole lamentable process, the English and French clubs have scarcely conveyed a hint of regret about the damage they have done to the game, much less the effects on the 18 full-time staff in the ERC, the many administrative and playing livelihoods that will invariably be affected and the fans across Europe.

The consequences could be a meltdown in the European game.

"The future viability of the professional game in Scotland could be jeopardised," read a statement by the Scottish Rugby Union, which projected a £2-million annual shortfall next season. Mired in a debt of more than £20 million, the Scots recently announced Border Reivers are to be disbanded at the end of this season, and with only nine home Magners Celtic League games, only one of them against a fellow Scot, the independently owned Edinburgh Rugby, the SRU will see even less sense in keeping Glasgow afloat.

Irish rugby will possibly be hit hardest of all. Thanks to the provinces' performances, the IRFU's share of the ERC cake would be between €4 million and €5 million.

Furthermore, for Munster, Leinster and Ulster, the home ties in the European Cup constitute three of their biggest fixtures of the season. Take Leinster's proposed move to a 20,000-capacity RDS. Three home European Cup ties might yield €1.5 million in gate receipts alone. The ripple effect on their sponsorship deals would also be significant.

For the players, no less than the fans, the impact is grim.

"It will certainly cause a problem for the players here," admits the Irish Rugby Union Players' Association chief executive, Niall Woods, "not only in the playing side of things in losing out on competitive games, but monetarily as well. Nearly every player's contract has a bonus scheme built into the Heineken Cup and the Challenge Cup and this would affect those on the lower end of the scale just as much if not more.

"It might not be too bad for one year, especially in a World Cup year, but from a playing perspective, players would be denied six, seven or eight matches a year to help make that step up to international rugby. In the long term it would be disastrous."

The Welsh, helped by the Millennium Stadium, say they have contingency plans in place. One wonders if they are also planning to expand the group stages of the Anglo-Welsh Cup, which might just as easily be named the BBC Cup, into home and away matches. In the longer term as well, perhaps this will signal a moral dilemma for the Welsh in whether to side with their Celtic cousins or an Anglo-French alliance.

Clearly, Blanco and the LNR have opportunistically used this imbroglio to ease domestic fixture congestion given the World Cup in France consumes September and October. For next season, at any rate, it suits the French not to be in the European Cup, not least in light of their new deal with Canal+ for coverage of the Top 14, not as lucrative as initially projected, but still worth an estimated €22 million annually. With no European Cup, for example, the LNR would not be obliged to play the opening two rounds of their championship during the World Cup, as requested by Blanco's other bête noire, the IRB.

And, of course, all this is part of Blanco's wider power struggle with the International Rugby Board over the way the game is run.

Premier Rugby and the LNR say a boycott would cost each participating club €500,000 - though that figure could be doubled or even quadrupled by gate receipts, marketing, etc. But a year down the track, and everything is up for negotiation again. Blanco and the LNR want a seat on the IRB board, as well as agreement on a global season and limits on the ever-expanding "monster", as Blanco sees it, of international rugby.

So, in the short or long term, does the Heineken European Cup have a future? Lapasset has said he will seek to broker a deal in England. And on BBC Radio yesterday, Thomas and the Leicester chairman, Peter Tom, both intimated the European Cup could yet be saved in time for next season.

"We remain available 24-seven to meet Premier Rugby . . . the Cup can be saved," said Thomas. Tom agreed but added, "There would have to be meetings in a very short period of time in which all of the current issues can be agreed. I don't think we can continue in the way we have before with lots of different sets of talks. We need to be prepared to lock ourselves in a room for 24 hours."

One would have thought that need existed six months, as was the case when Tom Kiernan and the late Vernon Pugh QC played hardball with the French and English clubs until they emerged in daylight to the sound of the Parisian birds singing, having brokered the so-called Paris Accord under which ERC governed their tournaments for the last eight years.

The RFU have also wondered aloud about either taking Premier Rugby to court or inviting first division clubs into next season's competition, as might the French do with their second division clubs, as a 12-month stop-gap. But the attraction of, say, Pertemps Bees against Toulon appears minimal.

Another problem in all of this are the personality clashes that have evolved over the last decade. With each passing day, these grow deeper.

Furthermore, were the European Cup to be disbanded for a year, not only will jobs, sponsors and television contracts be lost and have to be revived but, as the history of the Celtic League demonstrates, a vulnerable and volatile tournament becomes less attractive to sponsors.

Ironically, this year's European Cup final in Twickenham is liable to see a world record attendance for a club game of 82,000. But whoever wins that match, for next season anyway, it looks like everyone's a loser.