Diamond still has faith as Falcons battle on

THE Premiership’s bottom two sides, Newcastle and Exeter, faced each other at Kingston Park on Friday night – a match which ended in victory for the Falcons – with talk of relegation back on the Premiership menu. The club that finishes 10th will meet the Championship winners in a home-and-away play-off, but only if the side seeking promotion fulfils the minimum-standards criteria.

The criteria have long been a source of frustration for aspiring Championship clubs who see them as a means of keeping them out of the top flight or facing the prospect of going bust, like London Welsh in the 2010s, spending millions of pounds to meet the conditions and getting immediately relegated with a fatal drop in income.

The creteria have been relaxed this year. Championship clubs have four years to meet the stipulated ground capacity of 10,001 but they only have until the end of January to submit detailed proposals of how they would meet the conditions. A concern is that planning permission is unlikely to have been granted by then meaning only Doncaster, the one side in the second tier that satisfied the conditions last season, will be a play-off candidate.

The Championship will be expanded to 14 clubs from 12 from next season. Three Premiership sides who went bust two years ago, Wasps, Worcester and London Irish, could be fast-tracked into it if they reform rather than starting life again at the bottom, the fate of Richmond, London Scottish and London Welsh in the past, but only the Warriors currently have a ground.

The move to bring them back has more detractors than supporters, but what they would bring is ambition. There would be less chance of a reprieve for the Premiership’s bottom side and it was not a good look for the top flight last season when Newcastle survived despite not winning a match.

The Falcons lost their first four matches this season, extending their losing streak to 25 in a run stretching back to March last year. Their director of rugby Steve Diamond believes the side that finishes bottom will face a play-off and has no time for those who say Newcastle are not worthy of their place in the Premiership.

“I know there is some conflict at the minute, but there are four or five teams in the Championship who are looking to meet the criteria and I expect the bottom team to be involved in a play-off at the end of the season,” said Diamond. “I read an article recently that asked what was the point of us being in the Premiership.

“We have been here for 30 years apart from a couple of seasons in the Championship when we came straight back.

We have won the competition so there is a point to us being in the Premiership.

We have not made the start to the season we wanted, but I am positive about the future because there is a plan in place to rebuild the club.

“It will take two or three years. We are very well run behind the scenes and we are trying to get the business running at break even. When a couple more boxes are ticked, this will be a fully functional business. When the infrastructure is in place, the squad will be assembled within the right budget.

“I am aware there is relegation this season and if we are in it, which I hope not, we will go into the play-off with as much gusto as we have got. We have got to trust ourselves as coaches and managers to get the best out of what we have here. I have no doubt that we will remain in the competition and become highly competitive.”

“I’m aware there is relegation and, if we are in it, we will go into it with gusto”

Diamond has long been a supporter of promotion and relegation but also believes in the Championship winners having to meet entry criteria. Since London Welsh were promoted, for the second time, in 2014, only Premiership shareholders have been granted entry, Newcastle, Bristol, London Irish and Saracens.

“There are investors in the Premiership who have invested tens of millions of pounds for the privilege of being in the league,” said Diamond, below. “You need the right infrastructure and money is still being spent. Investment in stadiums has been significant and it is only fair that clubs coming up fulfil the criteria. I think it would be brilliant for the Championship if three massive clubs in Wasps, London Irish and Worcester joined it, although that could only happen if they all paid off their rugby creditors, which involves £3.5m in Worcester’s case. It would be short-sighted to deny them if they met insolvency requirements.

“Wasps are talking about setting up in Kent, Worcester have Sixways and I assume London Irish will be looking for a location in London. It is not just about them because an open invitation has gone in and there is an opportunity for any club with ambition to play in the Premiership.”

The Championship has proved vexing for the Rugby Football Union which has slashed its funding this decade. The governing body is looking to the 2025-26 campaign to reboot the tournament and make it one which, in time, will be a repository for ambition rather than an end destination for clubs that have no designs on the Premiership.

The likes of Bedford and London Scottish have been scarred by their experience of the Premiership and do not blink at the hard state of financial reality. Exeter showed in 2010 that there was a way of bridging the gap, building on and off the pitch stealthily over a period of time so that when they went up they were prepared for the skewed central funding policy that meant they received far less annually than the other clubs who were all Premiership shareholders.

A shareholding was built up over time and it was a system designed to preserve the status quo, making the Premiership far less accessible than the Top 14 in France or the Premier League in football which, despite the lucrative television deals it continues to generate, has remained a meritocracy.

The policy was justified by the Premiership on the grounds that investors would have been less likely to dig deep had the jeopardy of relegation been greater: the club that went down enjoyed a parachute payment that gave it a considerable advantage over the other Championship clubs and no original member of the top flight who was relegated failed to come straight back up with the exception of Bristol who ran out of money in 2009.

The system ensured that the financial divide between the two top divisions grew to the point where sides in the Championship needed outside investment, and lots of it, to fuel ambition. The Premiership today talks about the need for sustainability after the financial toll taken by the pandemic, but a club promoted from the Championship is highly unlikely to survive if it merely spends what it brings in.

One of the reasons for Newcastle’s plight is that they operate some way below the salary cap, determined not to go the way of Worcester, Wasps and London Irish. Diamond is an experienced, shrewd operator who had made a reputation for getting the best out of his squads, but the difference on paper between his teams and their first four opponents, Bristol, Harlequins, Leicester and Sale, was stark.

The four supplied 17 players between them to the England squad – almost half of it – last week with George Ford set to be called up if he proves his fitness. In the past, weaker teams in the Premiership used to be able to dog it out with the average match a tight affair. Kingston Park was one of the more inhospitable grounds, especially on a Friday night when the wind howled and the rain made for a heavy pitch that inhibited running rugby.

The weather is pretty much the same but the mud has gone, replaced by a 4G surface. Referees are less tolerant of teams who try and drag opponents down to their level by slowing the game down and the Falcons have only picked up one losing bonus point in their last 15 Premiership defeats.

Only one back, the promising Ben Redshaw, scored a try in their first four league games this season. Wing Adam Radwan, capped twice by England three years ago and one of the quickest wings in the country, has cut a largely forlorn figure.

As Diamond points out, Newcastle’s returns at the set-pieces and rucks are respectable, but the game now is more and more about making varied use of possession. Both Leicester and Sale hit the Falcons for 40 points, two teams who even last season favoured a structured game, kicking for territory. The Tigers were fortunate to survive at Kingston Park, but now they and the Sharks are prepared to open up while remaining overtly physical.

“I think it would be brilliant if three huge clubs joined the Championship”

“I think Sale and Leicester will finish in the top four,” said Diamond. “They are nearly complete teams: they both have big packs who when the weather turns can play the rough, tight game and they have back lines that can score tries.

“The pitch at Kingston Park used to be a real advantage for Newcastle, but now it comes down to personnel. I cannot criticise anyone in the playing squad. I have had a few better players in my life, don’t get me wrong, but in terms of attitude and wanting to do things, they are fantastic to a man. The ingredients are there, I think, to churn out wins and my job is to keep the players and coaches positive.”

Not least because of the way the Championship is financed, it is unlikely that any of its teams would be higher in the table than Newcastle were after the first four weekends. The question is whether the reset planned for next season will make a tangible difference at a time when the loss of three clubs has concentrated strength in the Premiership. It will not unless more of the money generated by the professional club game is invested in the second tier.

“We urgently need to have a meeting (with the RFU) on how the funding gap with the Premiership will be bridged,” Simon Halliday, who chaired the Championship board until June, told The Rugby Paper last month. “It was meant to have been held before the start of the season and we expect to get the clarity that gives our clubs the chance to compete after the play-offs. We want fair and equitable treatment.”

Halliday reckons that Championship funding has this season dropped to £133,000 per club, which is lower than the annual salary of a number of players in the Premiership and around five per cent of the salary cap for the top clubs. As Halliday pointed out, the true figure is £83,000 because clubs have to pay £50,000 for insurance. “It has put us under immense strain,” he said. And reliant on backers at a time when the Premiership is aiming for self-sufficiency.

While there is opposition to the idea of Worcester, Wasps and London Irish being given a berth in the Championship if they reopen for business, and pay off their rugby creditors, their presence would enhance the division’s profile at a time when it needs to attract sponsors and broadcasters.

To generate more revenue, the Championship needs to become a division made up of teams aiming to reach the top, but that will require substantial investment. It is almost a Catch-22: to get money you need money.

Halliday is confident there will be a play-off at the end of the season, not least because “broadcast partners expect it to be honoured” and it has been agreed by all the main bodies involved in English rugby. “It will happen because all of those bodies have mandated that it will happen,” he said.

Diamond remains confident that Newcastle will drive their own fate rather than be bailed out by the criteria. Asked if it was the toughest assignment in his coaching career he said: “We have a magnificent job and there are maybe 50 of us doing it professionally,” he said.

“I get my enthusiasm because it is a way of life. It is a challenge, but it is not like living in Gaza. It is a rugby match and you have to put it into reality. And we have to be realists. We have not been winning games nor getting close to doing so. We change it through good coaching and by keeping standards and the mentality high.”