An interesting proposal.

The United Rugby Championship is exploring a form of draft system to improve competitiveness across the league. Italian side Zebre lost all 18 games this season as they finished bottom of the table in consecutive seasons. Leinster topped the table after the regular season and only lost twice - including the semi-final to Munster. Chief executive Martin Anayi says the URC needs to "think laterally" about improving the weaker teams' standards. "There might be an ability to draft in players from the other unions who aren't getting game time," he told BBC 5 Live. "That is 100% [a conversation]." One of the biggest defeats Zebre suffered this season came at the hands of the Bulls, who beat them 78-12. The Dragons, who finished second from bottom, only managed to win four games from 18. Anayi says a lack of jeopardy at the bottom of the table is a result of a "closed league", one without promotion and relegation. "There is a natural filter system to relegation, one team goes down and the team that comes up is full of expectation because they have won the league below; we don't have that in a closed league," he added. "Our job is to find ways of helping the likes of Zebre and the Italian Federation to make them more competitive. "In American sports they have a system for doing that, the draft system. We don't have that, so we need to think a bit more laterally about that question. "Ireland have so much talent they are trying to work out how does everybody get game-time, while Scotland have two teams so that creates a bottleneck for them. "So those are avenues we are trying to explore. We are setting up a high-performance think-tank to help us with that question, from a league-wide point of view. "Zebre has been at the bottom of our table for a wee while and we need to try and do something to help them." Anayi says there is enough collaboration to ensure a draft system could work, without concerns from other unions about improving rival teams. "We have that collaboration at union level. They see the league is better and more commercially viable if all the teams are competitive," he added. "And secondly they want the Six Nations to be competitive. Our unions can see that helping Zebre is a good thing both for the league and also for the Six Nations."

I read it as that a player is drafted by a club and becomes their player, not that a player is loaned but the devil is in the details. 

Loans and duel registration isn't a problem as long as the time limits are set and players can't be recalled at the drop of a hat. 

Not as straightforward as that, though.  Loaning players to teams in the same league in an attempt to raise standards across the competition, and the lack of promotion and relegation means that ultimately nobody really suffers.  It doesn't compare with a relegation-threatened side filling its team with ringers to ensure survival.

That would help make things more unpredictable.

Especially if you have a player in say Wales "drafted" to Zebre and they cannot/don't want to learn to speak Italian, then you might have a problem. Likewise, try sending a Scotsman to South Africa against his will. 

It is a nice idea but its born out of the American ideal that the league owns all the teams and players which means it won't really work in a league of independent clubs.

Scotland tried a Border Reivers team, no-one went watch them and seemingly no-one particularly wanted to play for them either, Scotland is a club based game like England's and Wales used to be, Aberdeen already have a club at a high level as do the borders.

Isn't most of the traffic the other way anyway....?

Precisely. Hence all the North Africa or South Scotfrica jibes.

At this rate the surviving Premiership teams will be begging to join the URC as their own league is a walking disaster based around so call traditional supported clubs. Unfortunately professional rugby has moved on and left the Premiership behind.