Championship winners must go up says chairman Geoff Irvine
The Professional Game Board is meeting next month to bring clarity to the process that decides whether the Championship-winning club are eligible for promotion under the Minimum Standards Criteria (MSC).
Anxious to avoid a repeat of last season’s promotion farce involving London Welsh, the PGB want everyone to know where they stand before September is out.
But Premiership Rugby chief executive Mark McCafferty’s contention that the MSC needs only a few minor alterations has been met with a passionate response from Irvine, who feels there needs to be a serious rethink about the whole issue.
Irvine said: “First and foremost they mustn’t rush it. Premiership Rugby are trying to say we have to have something in position before the start of the season so their clubs know what they are doing. But that’s nonsense.
“All I would say is that if you finish top (of the Championship), providing you meet health and safety requirements, you should be allowed to go up and given time to sort your ground out.
“If you’re in Premier Rugby, all you need in terms of a business plan is a sign over the dressing room door, saying: ‘Don’t finish 12th.’
“But, as Newcastle will demonstrate this year, being relegated to the Championship is not the end of the world. I’ll tell you what is the end of the world…being relegated from the Championship because you go from £350,000 in funding to zero.”
The bottom-placed team will automatically be relegated from the Championship to National League One this season in a move away from the ‘death pool’ play-off format adopted in the three previous years.
Promotion play-offs will remain in place but with four teams contesting them instead of eight.
Irvine feels this will make the action during the regular season even more intense.
He said: “For the clubs at the wrong end of the table it is going to be a real fight to avoid finishing bottom. Under normal circumstances you’d say that three of the four play-off places will be filled by Newcastle, Bristol and Leeds, which leaves the rest of us fighting for one place.”
JON NEWCOMBE
