Rugby: Twenty20 unlikely to fly

Rassie Erasmus. Photo / Getty Images

A rebel competition - words not seen nor heard since the Cavaliers tour of the 80s or the hastily-defended attempt to bring a new world order in the 90s and which precipitated the professional game.

Those words are being heard again after Sanzar dismissed the effort by South African interests to set up a rugby version of cricket's Twenty20 game.

However, according to reports from South Africa since, it could be that Plan B is to go ahead and do it anyway.

How credible such an attempt is remains to be seen but the clear feeling of most observers is that Twenty20 rugby will not get off the ground.

As always in professional sport, money is key. If the organisers - former Springbok Rassie Erasmus and former Stormers commercial manager Frikkie Erasmus - have enough of it from backers and sponsors, some sort of competition is theoretically possible, although unlikely to involve the "top 200 players in the world" envisaged.

The other major obstacle is that it has to be timed to take place in the "down" period of January - the sole rest period of the leading test players.

End of year tours only finish in late November or early December and players are expected back at pre-season training with their Super Rugby teams by mid-January. To be playing aerobically demanding, competitive rugby in January would run the risk of burning out even the best athletes.

The selling point of Twenty20 rugby to Sanzar was that it would help to stop the migration of players to the northern hemisphere and blunt the advantages clubs there have with their hefty chequebooks.

However, Sanzar predictably refused to support a concept that would do nothing more than further damage players and endanger the value of Super Rugby.

Supposedly the brainchild of former Bok flanker Rassie Erasmus who is now the director of coaching at Western Province, the idea was to build a fast, almost sevens-like version of rugby with 15 players on either side.

The game would be cut down to just two 20-minute halves and would be played under different rules to reduce the amount of kicking. According to reports, the competition was targeting 200 of the world's leading players to play for eight franchises in a three-week tournament to be played in South Africa during January 2012.

The two new football stadiums in Cape Town and Durban had been touted as potential venues with each player reportedly in line to receive $100,000 each.

The money on offer for three weeks of rugby was significant and would not, in theory, impinge on any of their existing commitments. If leading players could make a guaranteed extra $100,000 a season by playing each year in January, the theory was they would not still head off to Europe in their droves.

That was the argument, but all that has been rendered redundant now that the proposal has not won any support from either the IRB or Sanzar.

"Sanzar's representatives met with the promoters of the competition so as to better understand what was envisaged and because we are always open to any ideas that might help promote rugby in our three countries," said Sanzar chief executive Steve Tew.

"We were told we would then receive a formal proposal and this has not happened. However, having considered the concept and the way in which it has been developed; Sanzar has decided it has no interest in any further discussion of the proposed competition."

Frikkie Erasmus was quoted by several South African news sources as saying planning for T20 Rugby would go ahead, even if it had to be a rebel series - and the way the new proposal has been handled suggests such a plan might have been in the thinking of the Erasmuses anyway.

News of the bid was deliberately leaked to media to help build interest and some key players have already been approached without working through their rugby unions - something that irritated the Sanzar hierarchy.

World rugby has always been able to retain players by being able to offer credible international tests and tournaments - although the proposed rebel movement of the mid-1990s came close to unseating rugby's traditional power base before today's professional rugby structure was created.

However, there are two other main reasons why the scheme might struggle after being blocked by Sanzar:Fifteen-man rugby has this year developed a new and more exciting flavour.Sevens is the shortened form of the game and it is difficult to see T20 taking over from it.

That leaves one reason for being - money. The comparison with cricket's T20 IPL series in India is inescapable - flashy franchises, large salaries, forgettable cricket matches of little interest to anyone outside India.