Ritchie faces tough Premiership fight

The former RFU chief executive has his work cut out uniting the top flight’s warring factions

When former Rugby Football Union chief executive Ian Ritchie gets established as chairman of Premiership Rugby, he might find RFU infighting is a mere bagatelle compared to Premiership Rugby politics. Ritchie might already have worked out the landscape, but in case he has not, there are things he should know.

There are two power blocks in Premiership rugby that clash with each other on nearly every issue.

As with the salary-cap breach fiasco, the powerhouse clubs of Bath, Leicester, Saracens, Bristol and, for reasons other than megabucks, Exeter, roughly align in one camp, with the rest having numerical superiority but less cash: a lot less cash.

Unsurprisingly, the questionable influence of Bath owner Bruce Craig is a factor in the blunt nature of how the richer clubs negotiate and their overall view of what is and is not in the best interests of the Premiership as a whole.

You could argue that this is just a manifestation of the sort of squabbling that occurs in every similar organisation, like the Premier League. But unlike its footballing counterpart, the Premiership is not awash with money at the lower end and there are other issues, with wider ramifications, that should trouble Ritchie and the rest of English rugby.

To explore the litany of issues would take many columns, so let us focus on two points. As I predicted last week, the concern over the state in which international players return to their clubs is real. Although the clubs and the RFU recently agreed a document that governs the next eight years between the parties, there is a faction in the Premiership that is ready to challenge parts of the agreement if its effects turn out to have deleterious consequences that go beyond their expectations.

One lever the clubs could use is to withhold players, but that would find no support from the players. A more likely response is to demand greater compensation from the RFU for the release of players, but every extra pound conceded by the RFU is a pound that cannot be invested in the rest of the game. The clubs realise that this will not go down well elsewhere, so it is likely that another measure will be mooted to tackle their concerns – an increase in or removal of the salary cap.

Whenever you read about the Premiership clubs and their reactions to various issues, bear this in mind: it is the overt aim of some and the covert aim of others in the mega-money group to do away with the salary cap. If they achieve this, the inequalities in funding will be locked into the structure and, as with the Premier League, the wage bill will roughly determine a club’s league finish.

The second issue is that of ring-fencing. Nearly all the clubs are in favour but dare not say so openly. They are aware of the antipathy from the wider game which, egged on by certain rugby writers, clings to the notion of seamless movement from bottom to top, even though the reality is starkly different.

We have already seen the disappearance of London Welsh, and consider the plight of London Irish, a club who are a world away from the badly-run Welsh. You only have to see the number of former London Irish academy players, most England-qualified, playing throughout the league to know that the club does things the right way. Despite having a smaller number of players, until Wasps recently had to relinquish their London catchment area, Irish supplied four players to the 2017-18 EPS England Under-20s squad; Bath supplied none.

Now facing relegation, Irish will lose many players and the dogfight to come straight back up.

There is not enough Englishqualified talent to fill more than one professional league. Ritchie should ask the proponents of unrestricted promotion and relegation to detail how they rationalise the waste of investment and loss of long-established clubs that accompanies the annual merry-go-round. When he receives only platitudes, as he will, he should persuade the Premiership clubs to argue their case openly. Pro-14 and Super Rugby make it work and provide players for their national teams. Time to move on.