EXCLUSIVE: Championship playoffs  set to be scrapped

By NEALE HARVEY
The controversial Championship play-offs are set to be discarded as part of a new £220m, eight-year agreement between Premiership Rugby and the RFU.
As first reported by The Rugby Paper in April, the new deal will see top-flight clubs double their existing £110m RFU funding deal which was brokered in 2008.
Academy boundary disputes involving Wasps, Worcester, London Irish and Saracens have been resolved and Premiership Rugby’s desire to bin the Championship play-offs in favour of a straight first past the post system has been agreed.
Some Championship clubs were keen to retain the top-four end of season shoot-out but Premiership bosses are determined to do away with a system that has held ambitious Bristol back for years.
Championship clubs have been offered a sweetener believed to be around £40,000 each – to smooth the Premiership Rugby/RFU deal, which was presented to the RFU Council on Friday and is due to be announced within the next fortnight.
A Premiership insider told TRP: “Premiership clubs are in favour of a first past the post system in the Championship. The Premiership clubs support promotion and relegation and see value in it, but we want the best Championship club to come up, whoever that is.
“Bristol kept messing things up in the play-offs and we ended up with London Welsh coming up, which caused a load of problems.”
A play-off between the team finishing top of the Championship and the bottom side in the Premiership has also been mooted, but that was rejected by the top-flight clubs, with relegated Irish threatening legal action over the issue.
Irish, who look set to retain Kiwi Tom Coventry as director of rugby, can now do battle with Yorkshire Carnegie, Doncaster and the rest knowing their route back to the top-flight is clearly marked out.
Subject to the Premiership/RFU deal being ratified later this month, England Test players will be guaranteed five clear weeks of rest each summer.
In return, if targets are met individual clubs could collect in excess of £2m in RFU funding annually. With TV and sponsorship money worth £4.1m-a-year on top, clubs can budget on receiving over £6m each per annum.