Once again, the RFU is failing second tier
NICK CAIN
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ANEW English season starts this weekend with strife and frustration in the late September air.
It’s more cordite than confetti for the 12 Championship clubs as they battle with an RFU administration that seems determined to keep them on the margins of the professional club game.
There is deep dissatisfaction with what second tier clubs see as the Twickenham suits making frequent noises about concessions and co-operation on promotion-relegation, while simultaneously bolting the door to progress.
How else, they argue, could anyone describe their blatant attempt to deny the Championship clubs the fair funding that makes the play-off a viable vehicle for promotion-relegation?
Instead, the system being proposed by the RFU is simply a carbon copy of the old Premiership cartel wheeze of denying them funds, and then waiting until they fail. They want a promoted Championship club with a miniscule annual funding package of £133,000 to compete against Premiership teams which have just been awarded through the PGP a rise in RFU central funding from £2m to £3.3m.
It’s like telling someone that they can participate in a race in June, but then giving them the handicap in September of having to run a full 400 metre lap while everyone else starts 100 metres out from the finishing tape.
This stacking of the odds against Championship clubs is a complete contradiction of the claim made by Bill Sweeney to the DCMS enquiry following the Wasps and Worcester bankruptcies two years ago. The RFU chief executive said then that he was working on linking the Premiership and Championship together, “so we have a more compelling league structure”, which, “will help us drive additional revenue and benefits for the game”.
Yet, two years on, we have a front-page story in The Rugby Paper in which leading figures in the Championship clubs, notably recent Championship board chair Simon Halliday, says that the crucial funding issues surrounding the newly introduced play-off remain unresolved.
It is said that where there’s a will there’s a way, however, the RFU’s will seems to have gone AWOL. The result is that players, coaches, fans, backers, and sponsors of the second professional tier of English clubs face another season which starts with hopes of securing promotion to the Premiership in limbo.
While no one is pretending that more than half of the 12 Championship clubs are genuine promotion contenders, they all say that the galvanising properties of an open gangway are a powerful driving force for every club in the second tier, and those below them.
The assertion in an RFU statement lauding the PGP agreement, “that currently there is a major gap in competitiveness” between the leagues is also disingenuous.
Only one Championship club is in contention to be promoted, so it is that club that has to be competitive, and it is claptrap to pretend that leading clubs in Tier 2 like Ealing, Cornish Pirates, Coventry, Bedford, and Doncaster are not competitive with Premiership tail-enders like Newcastle and Gloucester – and also some of those above them.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the English club game is how competitive the Championship clubs are, given the swingeing RFU cuts that have led to the massive funding gap between them and the Premiership.
“The tragedy for English rugby union is that this almighty mess is totally avoidable”
A fortnight ago Ealing beat Bath 36-28 at The Rec in a pre-season “friendly”, and the Championship title holders – denied a play-off on ground criteria last season – faced a Bath team which included 15 of the 23 that trounced Northampton in the Premiership opener on Friday night.
Last season Ealing were nudged out of the Premiership Cup final by Leicester in a very close encounter at Vallis Way, after which the Tigers coaching staff endorsed their Premiership credentials.
The RFU fails to see the evidence, and to make matters worse, the impasse created is torpedoing the very linkages that Sweeney proposed between English rugby’s two professional leagues. The most glaring example of this is the player development pathway. This is meant to provide England’s U20 and Premiership Academy players with the match practice they desperately need, because too many spend far too much time at Premiership clubs holding tackle bags or sitting on the touchlines.
It is not so much a fast-track as being stuck in a match-free quagmire. Imagine the burning frustration of the England U20 players who became junior world champions two months ago by winning the U20 World Cup in Cape Town, at going from that peak of performance and achievement to becoming an added extra in a Premiership squad. It was reflected in this weekend’s opening Premiership round when only two England U20 world champs, props Asher Opoku-Fordjour (Sale) and Afo Fasogbon (Gloucester), were included in the starting line-ups of the 10 Premiership clubs.
Championship clubs are the ideal platform for young players to take their next steps in developing their full potential and maturing as professionals. It provides the opportunity to disperse them evenly throughout the league, on annual contracts which, crucially, give them the opportunity to play matches week in, week out in England’s best club league outside the Premiership.
The Championship’s credentials as a highly beneficial nursery for future England internationals has been established for more than two decades, with Ollie Chessum’s stint with Nottingham a recent example. Yet, it is now shutting down according to Halliday, because with no RFU pathway plan, the Championship clubs are not prepared to accept unfunded piecemeal Premiership placements.
The tragedy for English rugby union is that this almighty mess over promotion-relegation and player development is totally avoidable – and as the governing body it is the RFU which is ultimately responsible. It is now duty-bound to clear it up. Rapidly.
