Readers write about Brad Shields, Cornish Pirates etc
After all of the indications that Premiership promotion and relegation would be dumped, it seems as though what are referred to as English rugby’s ‘power brokers’ have lost their nerve.
I very much doubt that the issue is dead, because the arguments for it are now so compelling, but it does seem to have been kicked into the long grass for at least a year.
There has been a lot of sentimental twaddle written and said about this in recent months, and it seems as though critics of ring-fencing will come up with all sorts of peculiar arguments to forward their case.
The news that the much-vaunted Stadium for Cornwall has received funding approval was greeted as evidence that the Cornish Pirates could win promotion to the Premiership.
The new stadium is more than 25 miles from their current ground in Penzance, and apparently Truro is seen as opening new opportunities to increase their support. It may, or it could damage their base if existing loyal supporters choose not to travel. Their most recent home games have attracted ‘crowds’ of less than 1,500, and while Cornwall may be a rugby hot-bed, the punters don’t seem to be flocking to watch it.
The Pirates currently sit fourth in the Championship, a country mile behind Ealing and promoted Bristol. With the new stadium not ready for at least 18 months, you have to be a supreme optimist to see them as Premiership material within the next five years, and if they did get promoted, would they be viable with their current level of support?
Five years is an interesting timeframe as I keep hearing about once-great Coventry having a fiveyear plan. However, that’s a plan to get promotion to the Championship – which they’ve done – and then to consolidate their position, with the aim of making it to the top third of the league.
It is fantastic that ‘Cov’ have such ambition, and there won’t be a rugby fan who wishes them anything but well, but serious Premiership contenders? Not for a considerable period of time, or maybe never with Wasps already in the city.
The fact, no matter how unpalatable this might be for the rugby romantics, is that the Championship is a mess. Have a good look at the league table, and tell me which clubs, other than already-promoted Bristol, could, within the next three or four years, realistically survive in the Premiership – I’ll save you the job, there are none.
London Irish are about to be relegated, and under normal circumstances the working assumption would be that they’d romp through next season’s Championship, giving their supporters lovely away days at the likes of Jersey and Cornwall, before re-taking their place at the top table. However, it’s not quite as clear as that, because Irish are clearly in trouble.
They were cruelly nicknamed the ‘Not Nots’ – not Irish and not in London – and there’s still some validity to that. They’re more Irish than they were with owner Mick Crossan, and new coaches Les Kiss (Aussie, but you know what I mean) and Declan Kidney, but they still rent the Madjeski Stadium where, bar the St Patrick’s Day match, there’s as much atmosphere as an empty church.
There’s been talk of moving back to their London roots by doing a ground-share at Brentford’s new stadium, and it’s public knowledge that the club are seeking new investors to share the burden with Crossan, but relegation changes the sums in such a dramatic way that the balls have all been chucked up in the air, and who knows where they’ll land?
Seemingly the reason for bottling out of ringfencing immediately was that they couldn’t decide whether 12 or 13 clubs was best. So, it seems that the decision was to let poor old Irish get relegated, and wait to see how they got on in the Championship.
Goodness knows it would be horrible if it happened, but should Irish struggle in the second-tier, it wouldn’t half make things simpler for the other 12 Premiership clubs, and the shutters would more than likely quickly come down for a three or five-year period.