Plans to end the drop are dropped
EXCLUSIVE ENGLISH rugby’s enshrined system of promotion and relegation will continue for the foreseeable future after the Premiership clubs backed off from their attempt to ring-fence the elite.
Automatic one up, one down was under serious threat from club owners keen to block off the 12-team league.
But when push came to shove no workable agreement was reached at last week’s board meeting of Premier Rugby to put before the RFU at today’s Professional Game Board summit.
The sticking point was how to get 13 into 12, with Bristol already promoted and the relegated club needing to agree to being locked out of the league in which they are a shareholder. London Irish are almost certain to be the club to suffer the drop; Worcester are the only other club who could mathematically go down.
Turkeys do not tend to vote for Christmas and club owners were ultimately reluctant to push through a deal by force. It led to the clubs abandoning their position.
“When it came to it we couldn’t look another club in the eye and say you’re the one,” said a source.
The U-turn will be met warmly by those Championship clubs with designs on Premiership status and also by supporters who view the system of promotion and relegation throughout the leagues as the lifeblood of the game.
They point to the rise of English champions Exeter, which would never have happened without the carrot of promotion, and the threat which Bristol, with Steve Lansdown’s money behind them, will present to the status quo next season.
The hawks within the Premiership see relegation as a negative, in financial terms and on the style of rugby its shadow casts on the English game.
Proponents of ring-fencing also point to the success of the relegation-free Pro14 in supplying three of the semi-finalists in the Champions Cup this season.
It has been a long-running debate in the English game but it has been sparked back into life with the changes to the global season announced last summer by World Rugby to come into effect after the 2019 World Cup.
The shift in the northern hemisphere season initially led to a land grab from the clubs involved, declaring they would extend the Premiership season by a month. This plan was shouted down by the players’ union with threats of strike action. The calendar switch, though, offered the opportunity for blue-sky thinking, which the clubs took as a chance to seal off the Premiership.
It gained increasing traction over the winter but finding a unified stance – even with the olive branch of a review of the make-up every three or five years – has ultimately proved beyond the clubs.
Expanding the league to 13 was one alternative option discussed but one which led to an obvious fixture imbalance with an odd number of clubs. Going up to 14 made more sense – especially with the likely demise of the AngloWelsh Cup creating more room in the calendar.
There is a precedent for this with the Premiership expanding to 14 for its second season in 1998-99, only for the professional arms of London Scottish and Richmond to be consumed by London Irish the following season and for the league to revert to 12, where it has remained since.
However splitting the Premiership’s income 14 ways rather than 12 is unappealing to the existing incumbents, who make a combined loss of £30million as it is.
A new title sponsorship deal for the league has been agreed for next season with American insurance giant Arthur J Gallagher, but while it sees an increase on this season’s one-year deal with Aviva, it still represents less than the clubs were receiving two seasons ago.
YORKSHIRE CARNEGIE’S Brandon Staples has been banned for four years after testing positive for steroids.
The 20-year-old claimed to have drunk a contaminated nutritional drink while in his native South Africa.