Clubs must help save themselves with cuts
Isometimes wonder whether the Premiership and its clubs are living in a parallel universe. We keep getting told how vital it is that crowds are allowed back into grounds, but if you’re a Premiership fan you know that all the crowds have ever been doing is mitigating the clubs’ sizeable losses!
Every fan wants all 13 clubs to be saved, but surely a condition of offering help is that the clubs show they’re taking steps to help themselves?
However, while the clubs have been reckless in racking up their ridiculous losses over the years, we shouldn’t underestimate their importance to their local communities. They all have Community departments that do great work and, on a social level, can you imagine Leicester without the Tigers, Northampton without the Saints, Gloucester without the Cherry and Whites, and so on?
The loss of its professional rugby club would have a catastrophic impact on any city, and on their inhabitants – sport goes miles beyond just winning or losing. Newcastle Falcons’ director Mick Hogan quoted me some fascinating research into the contribution they have made to their local economy – and they’re in a football-mad city where
they have to fight to get attention.
Mick spoke passionately about the social impact the club has had in the North-East, “We’ve been successful in attracting big rugby events from both codes to Newcastle, and if the club wasn’t here that wouldn’t have happened. We’ve had three RWC games, four Super League Magic Weekends, the European finals, and the England v Italy game – independent research has valued the impact of those events on the local economy at just over £200m.
“If you then add in the impact of the Falcons and the local Rugby League team, rugby has contributed over a quarter of a
billion pounds!”
A way has to be found to save the clubs, but they need to start to put their houses in order. The fudged temporary salary cap cut announced back in June has to be just the start, and I’d be amazed if further cuts weren’t being discussed.
The days when fans wanted their clubs to spend, spend, spend in search of success are gone, and I suspect most fans’ priority now is to see their club survive, and to be part of a league that still exists.
You have to question the wisdom of publishing the full 20/21 Premiership fixtures, through to the end of June,
at the same time as arguing that a further six months without crowds will kill off some clubs!
However, while the Premiership fixtures are announced, there’s a deadly silence about the prospects for the Championship, and it now seems likely that there will be no action until into the New Year.
We now have the ludicrous situation where last Saturday Saracens were representing England in the Champions Cup semifinal, and coming within minutes of beating a team with a monster budget, full of ‘galacticos’, but after today they don’t know when their next game is! This genuinely falls into the ‘you couldn’t make it up’ category, and other nations must be laughing at English rugby shooting itself in the foot!
However, it seems that the message is finally getting through on ending promotion and relegation, and more clubs seem to be seeing that a 13-team Premiership would aid the league’s survival. I would hope that while the campaigning is going on for some sort of a government bail-out, the clubs are focusing on what they need to do.
A fixed salary cap with no add-ons, set at a level that every club will be able to afford once the crowds come back, and 24 games in a season instead of 22, with one team resting each weekend, has to be the way forward.
It seemed at last as if New Zealand were going to redress their shabby treatment of the Pacific Islands by involving a Pasifika team in the 2021 Super Rugby Aotearoa competition, but that has now been knocked on the head.
The reason given was that a Pasifika team couldn’t be competitive, and this from a league where Warren Gatland’s Chiefs contrived to lose eight from eight in the recent renewal! A more likely reason is that the Aotearoa teams were worried that a Pasifika team might attract Islanders talent, which could weaken their existing squads.