Guiness Premiership Tickets

Details of Guiness Premiership and the Ticket Luck value

Guiness Premiership
In the top division of the English rugby system, Guinness Premiership is a professional league competition for rugby union football clubs. At present there are twelve clubs in the Premiership.

Clubs competing in the Guinness Premiership qualify for Europe?s two club competitions, the Heineken Cup and the European Challenge Cup. The competition has been played since 1987, and has evolved into the current Premiership system.

In 1972 the RFU sanctioned a national knock-out cup known as the EDF Energy Cup. It was followed first by regional merit tables and then, in the mid 1980s, by national merit tables.

One of the casualties of the move to competitive leagues was the loss of traditional games. This league system has evolved since its start in 1987 when the Courage Leagues were formed.

Rugby Football Union, the governing body of rugby union in England, long resisted leagues as it was believed that leagues would increase ?dirty? play and put pressure on clubs to pay their players.

Instead, clubs arranged their own friendlies and had traditional games. The only organised tournaments were the County Cups and County Championship.

The first season was an incompetent success. Clubs in the upper echelons of the national leagues reporting increased crowds, interest from local backers and national companies as well as higher skill levels among players exposed to regular competition.

The fears that leagues would lead to greater violence on the field proved largely unfounded. By the next season, the RFU allocated fixed Saturdays to the league season, removing the clubs? responsibility for scheduling matches.

In those early seasons, there was no home and away structure to the leagues, as sides played one another only once. Initially two teams, Bath and Leicester, proved to be head and shoulders above the rest in the Courage League, and between them dominated the top of the table.

In 1994 the league structure expanded to include a full rota of home and away matches for the first time. The league turned professional for the 1996 season.

Clubs like Saracens, Newcastle and Northampton were able to attract wealthy benefactors. In 2000?2001 an 8-team play-off system was implemented, but the regular season champion was still considered English champion with the playoff champion claiming the ?Zurich Championship title?.

In the same season, a controversial knock-out cup style play-off system was introduced. It was decided that the winners of the playoffs would be crowned champions.

The next year a similar proposal was adopted under which the winner of the league had to play the winner of a match between the second- and third-placed teams for the title.

Although Gloucester won the league by a clear margin, they then faced a three week wait until the final. Having lost their momentum the second-placed Wasps beat them easily in the play-offs. The playoff structure was reformatted in the 2005-06 season.

Gloucester?s single victory in the playoffs occurred when the league leaders, in that season Leicester, were still considered English champions, Gloucester?s Premiership Championship victory being considered secondary.

The number of clubs taking part in either competition varies each season according to performances of English clubs in the prior season.

The top four placed clubs in the Guinness Premiership qualify for the Heineken Cup, though more clubs can qualify in a number of ways. In total, six clubs usually compete in the Heineken Cup.

If the winner of the Heineken Cup and European Challenge Cup is in the top four Guinness Premiership clubs, then the Heineken Cup runner-up would qualify, followed by standings after fourth in the Premiership. Seven clubs will compete in the Heineken Cup.