Mark McCafferty said that altering the Premiership Rugby schedule for Lions years would be "suicidal."GETTY IMAGES
The '21 British & Irish Lions tour to South Africa "could be destined for another chaotic start" after Premiership Rugby CEO Mark McCafferty suggested it would be "suicidal" for England's domestic league to alter its format for Lions years, according to Charlie Morgan of the London TELEGRAPH. McCafferty also said that the Lions seem to treat club organizations with "disdain" and revealed nobody had reached out to Premiership Rugby to "avoid a repetition of last summer's problems." The '21 Lions tour is "expected to last a shortened period of five weeks," comprising eight matches rather than 10 over six weeks. However, McCafferty "would not entertain the prospect of cutting" the semifinal stage of the Premiership or losing fixtures in another way to allow longer Lions preparation. He said, "I can't see any way in which we would change the format of the competition. I think that is suicidal, to go in and out of different formats the same as some have suggested for World Cup [years]. For a product as strong as the Premiership to mess around, it would massively damage the brand" (TELEGRAPH, 6/4). The BBC's Chris Jones reported McCafferty suggested a condensed Six Nations in '21 "rather than the club game being compromised." The Premiership clubs provided 20 players between them for last summer's tour. McCafferty: "The unions are the Lions shareholders. Maybe they could say: We'll play one less test that year in order to create that week. Or we'll go back to the thought of playing the Six Nations over six weeks rather than seven" (BBC, 6/4).
