Exclusive: Could European Pro Rugby Come to North America?

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: February 7, 2013

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Rugby union recently made headlines in North America when the Head of SANZAR, Greg Peters, commented publicly that his organization was weighing possible expansion of the Super 15 professional rugby competition to North America.

We are considering whether or not we will include new territories in Super Rugby and one of the factors we’ll be weighing up is their competitiveness.

Super Rugby in its present form is a pretty successful model … and we are not going to water it down. But we’d be derelict in our duty if we didn’t consider expanding into areas. The United States is a very big market and so is Japan and Asia generally. Ultimately it all comes down to what is in the best interests of the three SANZAR parties.

SANZAR is an alliance between South African, Australian and New Zealand rugby, and between them they run the southern hemisphere's two biggest rugby competitions; The Rugby Championship for international teams and the Super 15 as the hemisphere's elite professional competition.

Peters' comments in The Australian obviously created a great deal of excitement in world rugby, but left one very important question on the table.

If SANZAR was pondering a possible expansion to North America, what interest, if any, was there in such a move on the part of European leagues?

One league in particular, the RaboDirect Pro12, had already broken out of its traditional boundaries in the Celtic Nations of Scotland, Ireland and Wales and had expanded to Italy.

Is the idea of further North American expansion for the RaboDirect Pro 12 a realistic possibility?

To find out, we contacted the competition's Tournament Director Mr. David Jordan, who was generous enough to discuss the matter here, in this Bleacher Report exclusive.

That Mr. Jordan's league is highly successful both on and off the pitch is not in dispute. The PRO12 currently comprises a dozen ...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Rugby Union

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