Pay to go up? Shameful rubbish says Reynolds
GARY Reynolds, chief executive of ambitious Reading-based Rams, has launched a broadside at Premiership bosses over suggestions that aspiring clubs will have to pay £20m to join an expanded top-flight.
With talks over scrapping relegation and increasing the number of Premiership clubs to 13 or 14 at an advanced stage, the 13 Premiership shareholders argue that as they have been the ones to create value in the league, new clubs such as Ealing Trailfinders should have to buy their way into the topflight.
However, Reynolds, a wealth management execleague? utive whose Rams have ambitions to fill the Thames Valley void left by London Irish brands the notion as “outrageous.”
He told The Rugby Paper: “If they go down that route, shame on them. I don’t buy this rubbish about how they built the value of Premiership Rugby.
“They’ve taken money from sponsors and the RFU and a lot of it has come out of the community game. It’s come out of the pockets of the average supporter who pays for their ticket at Twickenham.
“They buy the RFU’s beer and burgers and then Twickenham feeds their profits to the Premiership clubs – then they turn around and say they want to charge £20m for an aspiring club to go into their
They can bugger off. They should be ashamed. It’s outrageous to think they claim they’ve created value when the vast majority of that value has come from supporters and sponsors.”
Reynolds added: “Premiership Rugby are a shambles. They have no right to demand £20m to get into their self-styled elite club and they need to be very careful that the rest of the game doesn’t simply tell them to get lost.
“We can restart the whole thing and the sooner community clubs from the Championship down get their act together, the better.”
Rams have spent the lockdown period gearing themselves up for life at a higher level.
Last season’s National One runners-up have invested £250,000 into a new grandstand and floodlights at their Old Bath Road ground.
Reynolds explained: “We’re keen to progress, and we’ve done a load of work on improving the club. We’ve developed our academy, our women’s teams and if any opportunity comes to move up, we’d take it.
“London Irish have gone and we know we have a good product and a fantastic catchment area in Reading and the Thames Valley.
“Our aim is to get fourfigures crowds regularly and move to 2,000.
“That £250,000 is a big investment but it shows we want to give people the chance of top-quality rugby.”
Were the Rams to make the Championship, Reynolds says proposals from Ed Griffiths around its future are on the money.
He added: “Ed had a vision for 16 clubs split into two pools, with play-offs, that would have created a lot of excitement. It included aspirational pathways that would reignite divisional and county rugby and it’s the way I would go.”