Ring-fence could reduce the drain on RFU funding
Ireally enjoyed last week’s article interviewing Plymouth Albion commercial manager Chris Bentley and his realistic view of the game in its current state.
As he rightly said, the Premiership are no longer rugby clubs, they are businesses and their players are commodities to be bought and sold if they fail to deliver what the business needs.
He also drew a comparison of the money paid to professional senior staff at the RFU and the money given to the Championship clubs for a season commenting on the fact the CEO is paid more than each club.
What he didn’t mention is the fact that the RFU are now also a business and have to pay the price if they want the best.
It was a stark vision of where the game is in these modern times and the steps it has had to take to try and survive in a professional world.
Chris also pushed the button that will get a number of letters flooding in by stating the need for a ringfenced Premiership if the game is to rediscover itself and move on.
I must admit there are some powerful arguments in the article for what he says but there are also some flaws, not least the reason for such a disparity in achievement and funding levels across the game.
We all know the reason the Premiership is given so much money by the RFU, it’s to buy the use of their players for the national team. At the moment the Premiership is the only club league in England which plays at a high enough standard on a weekly basis to identify potential international players.
The one major advantage a ringfenced Premiership could bring is to allow for the rebirth of a truly competitive County competition to be formed and maybe even some Divisional rugby.
If that were the case it could be a breeding ground for another group of players (late developers and those missed) for the RFU to select their internationals from, reducing the reliance solely on the Premiership.
Although Saracens are likely to set a precedent next season with a number of players selected for England from the Championship, it would need an agreement to be reached with PRL not to withhold players if the RFU wanted to select from outside their shareholding clubs.
If such an agreement could be reached, it could see the level of funding currently received by the Premiership reduced, with the RFU perhaps requiring fewer players allowing a more equitable funding structure for the whole game.
Personally, I have never been in favour of a ring-fenced Premiership as it stifles ambition, but I do understand how the inequitable funding over the past years has built a virtual ring-fence that is almost impossible to breach.
My only concerns about an official ring-fence are: would it deliver the things it should or would PRL be allowed to just use it to consolidate their position as the main drain on the RFU’s resources? In theory, a ring-fence should reduce the costs for Premiership clubs and thereby reduce the levels of funding that is required from the RFU.
With the threat of relegation lifted, it would relieve the pressure on clubs to buy more and more expensive players, coaches, etc to avoid the drop and should encourage experimentation.
However, that in itself could create a problem if owners felt it was no longer necessary to continue to invest if survival were guaranteed.
The Premiership is already fairly predictable with the usual bunch of clubs occupying both the top and bottom halves of the league and any further erosion in the level of competition could have a negative effect on the growth of the game.
We could see a stagnation of clubs who are regularly at the bottom of the league, happy to get the money from collective TV and sponsorship deals and union funding with no fear of the dreaded drop and see no need to invest in the future.
If Chris’ vision was to happen, the club game below the Premiership could flourish in a league structure that has no boundaries, a seamless league from top to bottom.
All clubs will be equal with nothing to stop any club going from the bottom to the top and, who knows, maybe incremental funding every step of the way. A dream once promised by the Union but soon forgotten in the harsh reality of the professional game. With everybody seeming to agree the need for a reduction in the number of substitutes in match day squads, it could have the effect of reducing the size of club squads and the size of England’s EPS, again reducing the money paid to the Premiership by the RFU and the Premiership’s collective wage bill.
As a benefit to the game, the idea of reducing substitutes would increase fatigue in matches and so open up opportunities in the later stages as it used to do. It may also reduce the size of players and, with any luck, return rugby back to a game for all.
Reducing the match day squad by two players could save the RFU close to half a million pounds a season which could be used to fund the England Counties team to play regular fixtures against the Tier Two nations.
This could have two positive outcomes: it would provide a welcome international representative stage for players below the Premiership, while fulfilling England’s commitment to the developing nations without having to pay excessive amounts of money to the Premiership for players.
“The inequitable funding has built a virtual ring-fence that is almost impossible to breach”