There is life outside top tier...not that the RFU seem to know
ON A freezing night, it was a fabulous game. Nottingham hung on to beat a spirited Cambridge side 22-19 at Lady Bay last Friday, to briefly claim second place in the Championship.
To the Archers, that meant they were near the peak of the English rugby pyramid, given that the top tier is locked up and will stay that way. A crowd of around 1,000 enjoyed a close encounter which highlighted how competitive the second division of English rugby can be. The DJ’s tunes created a buzzing atmosphere. Cheap tickets attracted plenty of young spectators, including many students. The coffee was good, the food was good and the rugby was good.
There is life below the Premiership and real value. Nottingham have a rich history of developing Test talent for England, from the likes of Brian Moore and Rob Andrew to — more recently — Tom Youngs, Dan Cole, Will Stuart and Ollie Chessum. But they and their rivals are struggling with reduced funding and restructuring plans hatched by the RFU and PRL which don’t suit them.
Late last month, the Championship voted unanimously to oppose a franchise system. They want to be part of a meritocracy, with freedom of movement, up and down.
But there is no prospect of any club being promoted to the Premiership in the near future, due to the Minimum Standards Criteria and an obligation to buy shares, which do not fit with any sustainable commercial blueprint.
Talks with the union are due to continue and the matter is now critical. Cornish Pirates have just abandoned hopes of playing at a new stadium in Truro due to uncertainty about the outlook for English rugby, after four leading clubs went bust in the last year.
So Nottingham are seeking to thrive at the upper level of the country’s club game, knowing that the Premiership stands apart; propped up by enhanced funding while the rest struggle on.
‘We are top of the pyramid,’ said their chairman, Alistair Bow. ‘Nottingham are the third-best club in English rugby. I can’t count the 10 in the Premiership — they are franchises. The Championship is the top. You can’t go any further. So we believe we are representing the rest of the game.
‘Our funding has been cut from £680,000 to £150,000 per club. It is not going back up. But this is not just about money. We support an all-game solution, and that is not just an agreement between the Premiership and the RFU. We need to have a say, because there are 1,400 clubs in English rugby and we are the top of that pyramid.
‘The Premiership do engage with us, but they’ve got their deal done. They’ve got their 10 teams and they’ve got their funding sorted, so they’re happy and they don’t need us. But we are the pathway for future players.’
Bow describes the Premiership as ‘technically locked’. In theory, there could be a play-off to decide promotion and relegation between the top two divisions at the end of this season but, in reality, it won’t come to that. ‘We’ve got clubs in this league — Ealing or Doncaster — who are worthy of being promoted,’ he said.
‘But it should be a meritocracy. At the moment, it’s not a fair competition to go into and we’re not treated fairly with funding, so let’s concentrate on sorting the rest of the game out. Then hopefully, one day, the Premiership will say, “The door is open again”.’