Sometimes sheer frustration and fury at the continuing logjams just make you want to clap your hands over your ears and scream: “Please, make it stop.”
Will they ever sort out the Premiership and Championship in England? We can reveal today that there is progress — in attitudes and measures, though not quite enough for delirium.
Boost the Championship? Nothing very vital. Just a move that would stabilise everything, give the hordes of young players bursting out of the academies and the young England teams — plus the hordes of older players just 5 per cent below Premiership standard — somewhere to play and earn a decent crust.
With the Premiership reduced to only ten clubs by the disappearance of London Irish, Wasps and Worcester Warriors and the Championship staggering, the professional stratum in England is alarmingly small — though the reduced Premiership is beginning to rattle along.
A fiery Championship would also give the sport geographical balance, provide a place where more fans would go to watch — everywhere from the redoubtable clubs such as Cornish Pirates to Doncaster Knights and old giants in between such as Coventry and Bedford, who still have the best followers.
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There would also be a chance of expansion. The RFU, showing flexibility and wisdom, will outline plans to their committee on Friday for the go-ahead which will show they could embrace a second division of 12, or 14, or perhaps even 16 clubs.
The higher numbers could mean a Championship in two conferences, a potentially explosive knock-out stage and fascinatingly, a chance for one or two franchise clubs to join current members. What a vison of revival. It’s a sporting no-brainer, for goodness sake.
The infernal triangle of the Rugby Football Union, Premiership Rugby and the Championship clubs’ body still have their work cut out. Concessions? Rare. For so long it seems co-operation has been seen as weakness.
The Championship has done well to survive after years of underfunding. For many years, the two leagues were hardly on speaking terms and especially on the issue of promotion and relegation. The Rugby Paper has compiled a list of slights to the Championship from the Premiership which almost made them run out of ink. In turn, the Championship has been divided inside itself but the mood is swinging.
The remaining barriers to the Championship signing up for a new deal are twofold. They want a major increase in central funding (some estimates are that Championship benefactors have put in £20million over the years); second, they want promotion and relegation for each league, a running sore of an issue for decades and where allegations of unfair protectionism by the Premiership clubs always surface.
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On the funding issue, The Sunday Times understands that the RFU is allocating the Championship clubs £4 million a season but that the clubs claim that eight years ago they were being given £8 million a year.
We also understand that £1.6 million will go directly to the clubs. The rest would be available for projects and upgrading, a kind of conditional funding. Simon Halliday, the former England centre now chairman of the Championship clubs, said: “I have nothing against conditional funding but the total we are being offered is nothing like enough.”
Occasionally Premiership Rugby has allowed promotion and relegation, but in other seasons there have been excuses to close the trap door, and also to impose a kind of barrier by circumstance.
When promotion was available, it always meant that a team finishing top of the Championship would only know that they had been promoted after the last game of the season — the Championship play-off final — and therefore would be entering the market for the new players they needed when the market had long since closed.
They were also charged under minimum standards, with either moving grounds to a borrowed place they did not control and where they could not bank catering or else build a 10,000-seater stadium in about two months. Promotion became a potential catastrophe. This created, in the words of one Championship official, “a zombie league of neutered feeder clubs”.
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So, at last, some genuine progress. Conor O’Shea, the RFU executive director of performance rugby, said: “The RFU and Championship clubs have been consulting for over a year on a strategy for the league which will enhance its commercial viability, develop sustainable business models for the clubs and attract new fans.
“Over the past two months, the RFU and Championship executive have been working together to agree the detail within the minimum operating standards, establish a governance structure for the league, provide a recommendation on league size and confirm a process for clubs to be part of a new Tier 2, all of which will be reviewed by RFU Council as the next step.”
There is no doubt that O’Shea, Bill Sweeney — the chief executive — and the RFU planners are genuine. They have called up the master competition strategist Terry Burwell, who has been the brains behind almost every major new competition in European rugby for years, to plan the new event and all its necessary backdrop.
And the RFU and the sport need more competitive teams for a different reason. O’Shea and colleagues have improved the flow of players coming up through the England Under-18 group and England Under-20 group. They are developing the next generation of props. They need new jerseys to fill.
A second tier with bite, with jeopardy and with power and facilities, would bring on the next generation of players, the next generation of referees and groundsmen and gatemen, and there is no question that it will draw crowds if they are properly run and competitive.
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So what is the view from the Premiership, the broker. They have been attacked for an inward-looking demeanour and used as an old Aunt Sally for simply looking after themselves in a savage market.
Phil Winstanley, once a fiercely redoubtable prop and now of Premiership Rugby, says: “We are very much in favour of the new division, whether it is called Premiership Two or whatever. The gap between the divisions is too wide, much too wide, and we have to close it. We must find ways to get game time for player development and the young players from the academy.”
And what of the alleged exclusion by minimum standards? “Last season we agreed minimum capacity could be 7,500 and then clubs could rise up to 10,000 afterwards,” Winstanley said.
“Perhaps there might be more concessions that could be made with the minimum standards. This time there would have been a playoff between the bottom club in the Premiership and the winner of the Championship, provided the winner passed the minimum standards. But only two clubs applied for consideration and only one, Doncaster, did pass the standard requirements. So, there is no play-off this year.
“But there could be concessions, perhaps we are going to have to do it. We do need 10,000 minimum capacities because I think everyone realises that to be commercially successful that is needed and that the new Championship will need minimum standards of facilities, coaching, media and medical.”
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As of Saturday, the Championship was holding out strongly for a significant uplift in the funding that the RFU is offering; and for a direct, unequivocal one up, one down to and from the Premiership with no play-off.
And they also want abolishment of the infamous “parachute” payment that the Premiership gives when one of their number has been relegated. As Halliday says: “That gives the relegated clubs £2 million more than the rest of the Championship for their playing budget and that is unfair.”
There must be concessions all round. They should lock the door the next time the triangle meets and let them out when they are finished. As Burwell says: “The intention is to create a competition that involves more of the clubs playing more meaningful matches.
“This means developing a fixture list in tier two that incentivises clubs to aspire to promotion while providing the jeopardy of relegation. The format needs to be simple and clear, balancing welfare against commercial opportunity plus improving spectator experience.”
Be honest. If people at the top end of English club rugby do not agree, then they should go away. This has gone on far too long, Let us have two stellar divisions. Stuff the remaining objections. Give us some real rugby to watch.
