There is one passage in the sales pitch for R360, rugby union’s new breakaway league, on which everyone ought to be able to agree. “Clubs around the world are feeling the strain, and are being propped up by the international game,” the proposal goes, and it is true that there is not a single team in the Premiership making a profit, seven of the 10 owe more than they own. Worldwide, at least 12 professional sides have gone out of business in recent years. It is just a shame about the rest of it, which has more holes than Newcastle’s defence.
R360 is brought to us by the team of Mike Tindall, Stuart Hooper, whose management career at Bath was one seven‑year lesson in the Peter Principle that organisations tend to promote people to the point of their incompetence, player agent Mark Spoors and John Loffhagen, who had a 13-month spell as the chief legal adviser for LIV golf.
