RFU must not waste this chance to reset
IN last week’s Rugby Paper Steve Grainger described how the RFU were meeting rugby’s needs during the coronavirus crisis.
The Director of Rugby Development wrote that Rugby Union “was one of the first sports to call an end to the season”. He added that “our first priority was the safety and welfare of all those involved in the game”.
If player safety was a major issue, why has the Premiership season not been terminated? Or is it once again a case of Premiership clubs receiving special treatment?
Mr Grainger says the RFU are involved “in supporting and growing the game at all levels”. How is that possible when the RFU have created a de facto ring fence around the Premiership; or, as was recently described, a ring fence ‘by funding’?
Mr Grainger continues: “The RFU have released £1m of funding to the Constituent Bodies (CBs), who have added £400k to this, creating a £1.4m immediate support grants fund for clubs.”
Can the RFU therefore explain why they fail to give counties (who account for the majority of CBs) a properly-formatted competition which might make a proper impact, so that they could, when required to offer financial help to their clubs, be in a far stronger position to do so? The County Championship, in its present form, is at risk of dying.
Yorkshire, the county with the most clubs and players, is the biggest under-achiever in English rugby. It has no Premiership club and, with a de facto Premiership ring fence already in existence, no prospect of one.
One of its two Championship clubs have just been relegated; its two clubs in National One are both relegated; one of its clubs in National Two North has been controversially relegated; modest clubs are obliged to undertake long and costly journeys to fulfil league fixtures; and there is no logically-formatted competition for its senior county XV to cater for the best talent at its scores of grassroots clubs.
Compare its level of achievement with Munster and Leinster, each with a fraction of the number of clubs in Yorkshire! It is the RFU’s present structure, in which league status is the be-all and end-all, which is at the heart of Yorkshire’s problems.
The north still has the talent to be a powerhouse of English rugby but the RFU have been totally negligent to allow northern rugby to become little more than second class citizens.
Brian Moore and Sir Ian McGeechan are among those who have suggested the coronavirus hiatus is the ideal chance to restructure domestic rugby in England.
Surely the RFU cannot waste this golden opportunity to reset by recreating a properly-formatted, if brief, county stage. Yorkshire would then have a chance of emulating Munster and company.