We’re all heading in different directions

JEFF PROBYN

A FRONT ROW VIEW OF THE GAME

Sunday

SO, at last we hear a smidgen of what the new MPGP (Mens Professional Game Partnership) will bring to the game and try to understand how it plans to transform the professional game in England.

Mainly, it seems that the agreement will provide better access to management of the top players to enhance their performance, while increasing playing opportunities for developing talented players.

I may be wrong but wasn't that what the old PGA was designed to do by paying a large sum of money to the Premiership to allow the England national team coach access to players outside the international windows?

The theory was that by giving our national coach more time with his selected players to improve fitness and playing ability as a squad we would see an improved England team.

I do wonder how allowing a new governance structure, the Mens Professional Rugby Board (which is separate from the RFU council) making specified regulatory decisions, I am assuming this will only be applicable to the Premiership, cannot be good for all of the game.

Rugby has always been a game that was played and controlled under the same laws and regulations, whether you were playing for ‘Old Rubber Duckians' at the bottom of the league structure or at the very top.

Any changes that creates a divide could have a negative impact on the whole game and once again cause problems in promotion and relegation and player retention.

As for the approved mechanism for promotion and relegation of a home and away play-off. it still provides a massive advantage to the Premiership team who, as I have written before, could conceivably spend the latter part of the season preparing for the play-off, resting players etc. The cynic in me says that the Championship had probably agreed to the play-off format as it was the only option on offer for the removal of the ring fence.

Personally, I would say that if the Premiership want a play-off it should be between the two teams at the bottom of the Premiership with the loser going down.

This makes much more sense as the team that gains promotion from the Championship would have had a much longer league season with no breaks, having to play 26 league games assuming home and away fixtures, as opposed to the Premierships with just 18 league games. There is also the financial advantage that the Premiership clubs receive from RFU funding. A total of £33 million shared between 10 clubs each season, compared to

“Rugby has always been a game that was played and controlled under the same laws”

just £4 million for the new 14 club Championship .

This enables the Premiership clubs to have bigger and more diverse squads with ‘star players' from other nations.

Even though the current Premiership agreements only allow for two foreign players in matchday squads, it doesn't include South Africans, Tongans, Fijians or any European players as foreign, which totally undermines the idea that all teams are fielding a majority of England qualified players in their match day squads.

While at the same time the Championship is going to be turned into a development tool for English qualified players even though they currently can't be selected for the England national team under the agreement, that players for the international squad can only be picked from players in the Premiership.

Then there is the contradiction surrounding the Premierships MSC, Minimum Standards Criteria, with the release statement stating: ‘If the Championship club were to win the play off, it would get promotion, provided it meets the MSC in place at the relevant time.'

This despite the fact they also say that clubs will be given four years to upgrade their stadiums to whatever the MSC is at the time, while also indicating that the MSC can be changed at any time should the Premiership wish to do so.

It also appears that the Championship will have its own MSC but under a different name of the Minimum Operating Standards (MOS) the limits of which we don't know yet but will be decided by the new tier 2 board before the August 1 cut-off date.

All in all, I can't understand why Championship chairman Simon Halliday has the audacity to say that the Championship has got what it came for and that every club can realistically dream of promotion to the Premiership and that the league is now open from the lowest league to the highest.

Although he is partly right that clubs can dream of promotion to the Premiership, but like all dreams very few if any ever come true.

There are currently now 12 teams in the Championship with Chinnor gaining promotion from the National Leagues with no relegation for bottom of the table, Cambridge, which begs the question; which clubs will be added to make the Championship a 14-club league?

If, as we all assume it is Wasps and Worcester or perhaps London Irish who make up the numbers, then the statement that when the play off takes place at the end of next season it will give a non-P share holder the first chance of reaching the Premiership since 2014, may not be true.

It will also be a huge kick in the teeth of all those clubs relegated to the bottom of the league structure for falling into financial trouble over the early years of professionalism.