Prospects bleak for Heineken Cup

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The 12 Guinness Premiership clubs voted unanimously on Monday not to compete in next season's premier European competition if their counterparts in the French Championship withdraw in protest at the RFU's refusal to grant English clubs equal shares and voting rights in the running of European competitions for the next five years.

"I'm going to continue to find a way to pull the French clubs back in but the prospect of that, when the French clubs decide on Thursday, doesn't look great," Mark McCafferty told BBC Radio Five Live.

McCafferty revealed that Premier Rugby - umbrella organisation for the 12 English top-flight clubs - are already looking at ways they can make up the fixture shortfall for their shareholder clubs if they pull out of the Heineken Cup.

He added: "We have been busting a gut to make sure European competition happens next season in the way everybody expected.

"We seem to have reached a point now with the French clubs where we can't do that, so we have to start to plan for the future.

"We have to make sure our supporters, who have enjoyed a fantastic period of growth for the club game, have their staple weekly diet of club rugby, so we will have to fill that fixture schedule now with either expanding the existing competitions or new games.

"We have existing tournaments in the form of the Premiership and the Anglo-Welsh tournament. We need to look at whether there are possibilities there, equally we need to add European fixtures on a one-off basis until we can find a way forward.

"Without the French clubs it's not a European Cup. Without the French clubs and the English clubs it's a Celtic competition with the Italians - and with all due respect that's not a European competition, that's a domestic, cross-border, home-unions competition with the Italians."