by Almost everyone in English club rugby agrees on one thing. It can’t go on like this. The system, if that is the correct word for the shaky stack of Jenga bricks underpinning a cash-strapped 10-team Premiership, is broken and a scheduled eight-year deal between the Rugby Football Union and major club owners It is considered the most important solution. -I needed a long-term answer.
Which is fine, except for one crucial detail. As it is, he does little for others. Talk to people in the second-tier Championship and you’ll find frustration, challenge and gallows humor in roughly equal parts after years of underfunding and central support. As Mark Lavery, director of rugby at second-placed Ampthill, says: “We’ve taken all the money out of the foundations, put it on the roof and now we’re wondering why the foundations are shaking.”
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Not far away in Bedford, the country’s longest-serving director of rugby, Mike Rayer, also feels there is a lack of recognition in certain quarters for the work that Championship clubs (and the national leagues that support them) do. subordinate) to train young players and coaches. , referees and communities from all over the country. “No one has taken the championship since before Covid,” Rayer says. “They have simply left him in a corner to fight for himself. “There are some really good things happening and there are some really good players in the Championship.”
However, as with local newspapers and county cricket, heritage and good intentions are no longer the safe shields they once were. Money is finite and there are more and more mouths to feed. In the eyes of many, including Lavery, the boss of a leading car sales group, the sport requires a complete gaming solution rather than one just for a protected few. “The RFU appears to have a fundamentally different worldview, based on a closed shop at the top level. For everything else below that, there doesn’t seem to be a plan. And we still want to increase the amount of money paid to PRL? Tell me about that. It is the economy of the asylum.”
All of this gets to the heart of the future of English rugby. Instead of huddling with a handful of debt-laden Premiership clubs, isn’t the RFU (check notes) supposed to be a membership organization tasked with sustaining the game at all levels? There were more collective conversations on Tuesday, but transformative central funding is still not on the horizon.
In a statement last week, the Championship had already formally rejected the idea of a “Premiership 2” franchise league, which it believes would not be meritocratic and would essentially reduce it to “farmer” club status. It means that uncertainty continues. “Premiership 2 indicates an umbilical cord that is not there because they have done a private transaction that we are not involved in,” said Simon Halliday, chairman of the championship committee. “We’ve been told countless times ‘We don’t have money.’ Let’s rephrase that. “They don’t want to assign it to us.”
All of this is in stark contrast to France, where ProD2, the league below the Top 14, is going from strength to strength. City-owned stadiums and a more lucrative television deal clearly help, but the difference remains stark. In England, even major Premiership clubs are trying to renegotiate their Covid loans, while the demise of last year’s championship winner Jersey further underlined the precarious nature of rugby’s financial picture.
So what should the future be like? Part of the problem is that there are more different visions than a busy Specsavers branch. Some clubs are ambitious, others exist largely in survival mode. Ampthill sit second in the league behind Ealing Trailfinders, but with no promotion or relegation, nor a stadium that meets the minimum standards criteria, what else can you aspire to? “We started 18 years ago and said we were going to enter the championship,” Lavery says. “At that time we were at level 7. We achieved five promotions in 12 years, but now we have hit a glass ceiling.”
Their central funding has also been massively reduced, from £680,000 in their first season to £90,000 once medical expenses are settled. Ampthill has a link with Saracens and several England players (Ben Earl, Alex Mitchell, Theo Dan and Freddie Steward) have worn the club’s shirt. However, what they really want is the opportunity to become the best club Ampthill can be. “Not long ago, some Saracens were playing in a park in north London,” says Lavery. “I know because I went down and watched them.”
A key ingredient must be a healthy pathway for players, with a set number of qualified English academy players receiving more playing time. In Bedford it has not escaped Rayer’s attention that former Blues full-back Rich Lane scored three tries for Bristol against Exeter this month. “There are still aspirational players in and around the Championship who could dominate it in the Premiership,” said Rayer, who has made 21 appearances for Wales and has been in charge at Goldington Road for 18 years. “We are also accessible. The players get to rub shoulders with the fans… you see the true human side of the game. That’s the beauty of us. But it cannot fully become a development league. We all needed to learn the game by playing with good, experienced players. “You can’t lose sight of that.”
Plus, championship teams are used to being inventive. “We are running a sustainable business… unlike the Premiership, we are not losing millions of pounds,” says Rayer, also convinced that promotion and relegation remain vital for the senior England team. “We have to fight for promotion and relegation. International rugby is all about the result at the end of the day. How do you prepare for that if you lose 12 or 15 games a year and it doesn’t matter?
Lavery agrees with him. “When you consider the drop in attendance, the drop in participation and the risks involved in playing this sport, it seems like we’re obsessed with something that makes the sport less entertaining because there’s no danger.” Halliday, however, does not foresee a rethink. “The game, whether you like it or not, needs to understand that the barriers to entry are not going away anytime soon. The only way to close that gap is to help close it from the bottom up.”
Many still feel that the rejected championship blueprint drawn up by Edward Griffiths more than three years ago contained some good ideas, but Halliday believes a viable structure may eventually emerge. “It will just take longer because of the hand we have been dealt. You can’t undo the past but you can learn from it. We all want to find a solution. We want to be the best possible path for the young players of tomorrow. We need to market who we are, something we haven’t done in years. And we have to improve our standards.
“I share the RFU’s view that we cannot continue in the same way. It is a huge challenge due to years of underinvestment in this group of clubs. You reap what you sow… I think we will suffer for years to come because of some of the decisions that have been made. But I don’t run the RFU. All I’m trying to do is make sure our clubs can manage their own destiny. Their value must be recognized and I want that respect. Let no one turn around and say that our clubs are not ambitious. “They are tremendously ambitious.”
