Any potential deal for the NRL to take control of Super League depends on the continued presence of French clubs in the British game. Australian powerbrokers are likely to abandon plans to buy a stake if Catalans Dragons and Toulouse are ejected by clubs leading a review into the sport in the UK.
There is an increasingly hostile power struggle developing in British rugby league after a number of clubs – spearheaded by Leigh Leopards and Batley Bulldogs – successfully removed Simon Johnson as the Rugby Football League chair and installed as his replacement the governing body’s former chief executive Nigel Wood.
Wood will lead a strategic review over the coming months that could determine the future direction for the sport. Clubs met last week and were asked for their views on a number of subjects including the long-term deal with IMG, the structure of Super League and, perhaps most pertinently, the role of Catalans and Toulouse in the pyramid.
There is understood to be growing apathy from clubs – mostly those outside Super League – about what the French clubs bring to rugby league. However, that is not a viewpoint shared by a number of teams, including Wigan Warriors and Warrington Wolves, who are fully supportive of Catalans and Toulouse and did not vote in favour of Wood’s return.
Crucially, though, it is a sentiment with which the NRL and its chief executive, Peter V’landys, also disagree as they prepare to table a bid for control of Super League. They also have minimal desire in working with a regime spearheaded by Wood before the review is published this summer.
According to reports in Australia, the NRL is ready to take a 33% stake in Super League, but only on the condition that it assumes full administrative control of the competition, breaking the cycle of British rugby league’s major decisions being made by its own clubs.
Among their leading options for change should they complete a deal is a reduction in Super League from 12 teams to 10. But they want Catalans and Toulouse – the latter side now plays in the Championship – to be in that elite competition.
Sources in the UK and Australia have intimated that if a vote to eject the French teams succeeded it could have a major effect on the NRL’s plans. “No France would mean no PVL [V’Landys],” one senior figure in Australia said.
London, who look likely to be taken over by an Australian consortium in the coming weeks, would also be among the candidates to be in the NRL’s ideal Super League. That would put a number of heartland clubs in danger of being ejected with Wigan, Warrington, St Helens, Leeds and the two Hull clubs guaranteed a place.
