RFU will get backing for 14-club Premiership

SOUNDINGS taken by The Rugby Paper strongly suggest that the proposed moratorium on Premiership promotion–relegation will be passed by the RFU Council when they meet later this month.

However, the proposal is likely to be presented in two stages to make it more palatable for those who are implacably opposed to such a draconian measure.

With no relegation this season either Saracens or Ealing Trailfinders will be promoted into the Premiership for 2021/22 making it a 13-club competition after their two-legged play-off final over the next two Sundays.

At the end of that season there will be no relegation again, but a second Championship team will be promoted making the Premiership a 14-club competition.

From season 2023/24 there will be a play-off between the bottom club in the Premiership and the top club in the Championship and this should continue.

Council members are being told that such a move will have no effect whatsoever on the Community game as teams from the Championship down will be demoted and promoted as in previous seasons.

RFU chief executive Bill Sweeney will argue that this two-year moratorium will give Premiership clubs the chance to recover from their financial ravages during Covid and thus make the England team stronger building into the 2023 World Cup Finals in France.

With the new eight-year Professional Game Agreement being negotiated from 2022/23, the moratorium, which aids PRL, should give the RFU a lot of leverage going into the talks and thus reduce their exposure from the current £200m over eight years from 2016.

Optimists hope the savings will be ploughed back into the game.

The new Future Competition Structure will be announced for 2022/23 when wide-scale changes from Levels 3 downwards are expected.

The Council meeting had been scheduled for June 11 to follow the RFU AGM. But it has been moved. The RFU would say yesterday only that “it will be held later this month”.

Conspiracy theorists believe they are trying to find a busy moment to bury bad news.

By SAM JACKSON