The National Cup has seemed an untouchable part of the calendar for some time, despite being of little or no interest to most clubs, not least because it has so often featured teams apparently created for the sole purpose of entering the competition (shall we say). It has remained a fixture in the calendar, even when more popular events being discontinued through "lack of interest". But now RFUW say that "there is not enough interest in the Cup Competition", as a result of which big changes are coming... starting this season!
Plans to run a three-weekend cup for 2009/10 have been abandoned. Instead a tournament run on a "One Day Competition Format" will take place - when, where and (come to that) how this will take place has yet to be revealed, but more information is promised soon (one or two fixture secretaries will be anxious to hear more I suspect!).
But this is just a one year stop-gap solution. From next season (2010/2011) RFUW "will be working closely with clubs to develop the competitive opportunities for the Youth game, to include Regional leagues, a Cup and Development Cup competition".
So - everything is up for grabs! Not just the National Cup, but also league rugby and - well - everything else as well, whether it is currently run by RFUW or not. It also confirms the Pathway Proposal's direction away from centralised national events and towards a club game run and managed at divisional and CB level.
This does have a number of plus points (at least in theory). With supportive and active CB and Divisional management, leagues, cups and other events can be better tailored and adapted to support local needs rather than having one-size-fits-all slow-to-adapt programmes run from the centre. The big "if", of course, is that "supportive and active CB" bit. We are pretty lucky in Herts in having had exactly that for some time - but this has certainly not always been the case in every county, while there is currently no divisional management layer at all (we have had "regions" for many years, but officially they have only ever existed to run the regional teams - and will be abolished after this season anyway).
It is all a big jump into the unknown - although in all honesty its difficult to see how anything could be much worse than the current set-up. After all, the current record of regions and counties establishing and running events is actually far better than that of RFUW - compare and contrast the moribund National Cup with locally managed competitions like Herts Sevens, the London & SE [Dorking] Sevens, Gloucester 10s, or the South West and Thames Valley leagues. It could just work...
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