By Tadhg Peavoy
The decision to hold the Champions Cup final in early May, prior to the domestic European rugby finals, is a decision that is here to stay according to Paul McNaughton, the EPCR board director and member of the executive committee.
“It’s not up for annual review. The participants around the table don’t like changing terms of agreements because then you’ll have other chinks in the armour to change and other pressure points from other participants,” said McNaughton.
“It’s not going to change and be reviewed on a year-to-year basis.”
Regarding the ongoing issue of who will be the EPCR’s first independent chairman, McNaughton revealed the issue is ongoing, but that they hope to have a resolution prior the opening round of games.
McNaughton said: “It’s going to be an important post to have an independent chairman.
“We’ve gone through it in a lengthy professional way in terms of hiring a recruitment consultant. We’ve had several interviews and we expect the chairman to be appointed before the start of the tournament.
“It’s a non-executive chairman, but the role envisages at least a couple of days a week [of work].
“It’s a non-executive chairman, but he will be busier than a normal non-executive chairman in terms of getting out to the clubs and the stakeholders.”
"We’ve had several interviews and we expect the chairman to be appointed before the start of the tournament" - Paul McNaughton
The board director also revealed that due to the 2015 Rugby World Cup taking place in England next year, the pool stage fixtures of the Champions Cup will be held at different times in order to work around England 2015. However, he confirmed that there will still be four rounds prior to Christmas.
“There will still be four rounds, but they’ll be at different times of the year”, said McNaughton.
“It’s also going to effect the play-offs as the French season goes to 25 June. So, in the heads of agreement we talk about having two Pro12 teams and an English and a French team in the play-offs.
“We’ll have to look at that as we can’t have the Pro12 teams waiting to play the play-off.
“These are things we have to sort out. We also know the unions firmly believe we shouldn’t be going beyond June in the club season and should then be concentrating on club rugby.”
