Don’t block Cornwall’s rise with ring-fencing
THANK GOD the nonsense of a five-year moratorium on promotion and relegation – first mentioned 17 years ago – has been binned yet again because if one thing was absolutely guaranteed to thwart Cornwall’s efforts to produce a Premiership rugby side it is that illconceived twaddle.
This week came the excellent news that Cornwall County Council had voted through a £3m grant or the £14m Stadium Cornwall – known as S4C – which provides massive impetus to that project.
They are not quite over the finishing line, the Government need to come in with a similar sum, but the momentum is all with Cornwall and it’s inconceivable, politically, that Cornwall should now be denied such a facility when it is already seriously deprived compared with other parts of the country.
A 10,000+ capacity stadium could – should – see Cornwall finally tap into its great, but often frustrated, love of rugby and offer an all mod cons base for a Premiership Rugby side. Such a team would benefit from a Munster-like feeling of cultural identity, passion and fraternity and all the local clubs would be part of the pyramid, happily feeding the ‘mother club’ which will be tasked with carrying the flag for Cornwall.
The vehicle for this Cornish ‘super team’ clearly has to be Cornish Pirates down in Penzance who have been doughty competitors in the Championship over the last decade and kept the flame shining brightly during the darkest of times.
Their Mennaye Field, although much-loved, can never realistically be converted into a stadium that ticks enough boxes to be deemed permissible by Premiership Rugby so the existence of S4C has always been fundamental to their future development.
The one big cloud on the horizon has been these renewed suggestion of ring-fencing for five years although ultimately, of course, Premiership Rugby wants to do away with promotion and relegation forever.
Some have even tried to argue that such a situation would be ideal for a club like Pirates, allowing them time to put structures in place but frankly such an ill-conceived plan would have been fatal for the Pirates.
Say, on a wave of optimism, energy and communal goodwill, the Pirates got their act together and finished third next season and then won the Championship in 2019-20 with the promise of Stadium Cornwall being ready for the start of the 2020-21 season.
It would be absolute purgatory for such an ambitious club to be condemned to another three seasons of Championship rugby. Groundhog Day x3. How exactly do you keep outstanding, hungry local players with England ambitions at the club when they must spend another three years marking time playing Championship rugby before, possibly, getting a shot at Premiership rugby?
How do you attract top line overseas singings – at the height of their powers, rather than just collecting a pension – to a club that will be moribund for at least three years? Big fish in small ponds normally die of oxygen deprivation.
And come the end off the moratorium, having waited so patiently, they might have been pipped to the Championship by other big fish like London Irish or some likeminded ambitious club like Ealing, Jersey or a resurgent Coventry.
Momentum is everything in sport. That’s not to say that it might not take Pirates five years or even more to get into the Premiership. Of course, it might, it took Exeter even longer.
But at every point in their journey Exeter were chasing the ultimate prize and were energised and galvanised by the prospect of playing Premiership rugby the very next season if they won the Championship play-off. Only by being in a constant state of readiness for that, were they fit for purpose when everything fell into place. That’s how they hit the ground running at the first attempt.
Ditto with the Pirates. From the moment S4C becomes a reality they and everybody concerned with the club must be reassured, in writing, that if they win the Championship they are going up the very next season. That’s the whole point and essential dynamic of leagues. When will the flat earthers grasp this?
There are no certainties in sport. Opportunities are fleeting and rare and in a league structure you must be free to strike when the iron is hot.