No-show clubs lead cup into an early crisis
A RAFT of late withdrawals from clubs has seen the RFU’s new Papa John’s Community Cup get off to a rocky start.
Despite the lure of a day out at Twickenham for the finalists, it is estimated by TRP that as many as 35 clubs have pulled out of the different men’s competitions, which have been tiered based on league positions, while many more opted not to take part in the first place.
Player availability, cost and the timing and structure of the Cup have been cited as some of the main factors in creating a situation that, if it worsens, will be an embarrassment to the RFU.
The flagship Regional 1 Championship, featuring some of the best clubs outside of the National Leagues, has lost Dudley Kingswinford and Blackburn, resulting in a quarter of the round-robin fixtures in that grade being classed as walkovers.
Faced with a 500-mile trip to Alnwick, which would have cost them money on coach hire over and above the £531.30 they would have received from the RFU’s travel allowance pot, Midlands outfit Dudley Kingswinford chose to pull out as late as Wednesday.
A statement on the club website said: “After a hard season both physically and mentally DKRFC have taken the decision to withdraw from the Papa John’s Community Cup.
“After last Saturday’s magnificent end to our league season the players and coaching staff were consulted and they feel battered, with a number of players carrying injuries. The thought of a 500-mile round trip on Saturday was a step too far.
“We will settle with league champions (Regional 1 Midlands) and promotion for this season!”
This left Alnwick in the north east and Lancashire side Rossendale, who are coached by Scotland wing Byron McGuigan, scrambling around for a solution that would appease matchday sponsors.
As a result, Rossendale were still considering their position until as late as Thursday evening about whether or not they should play their opening game against Driffield.
Rossendale chairman Nick Ingham was blunt in his assessment of the situation. “The RFU couldn’t a p***-up in a brewery.”
Ingham’s annoyance stems from the lack of communication from the RFU. “The RFU treat us like bloody idiots. I am chairman of the club but I have to find out through people who look on social media that, ‘Oh, by the way, Dudley have pulled out and we’re now going to Alnwick’. Nobody from the RFU had the decency to tell us. We had 100 people coming for lunch.”
Ingham also highlighted the fact that the league season being cut down to accommodate the Cup has led to the club losing two sponsored home games. “That is what we all survive from, our clubhouses rely on home games to generate money,” he said.
“Then the RFU say, we’ll run a Cup competition. So they run it at the end of the season but they don’t tell us when we are playing, who we are playing until two to three weeks before. So the argument to say we wanted it for sponsors etc. has gone out of the window.”
Left with insufficient time to find a sponsor for their first home game, Blackburn also faced a big hit financially in terms of travel costs. “We’d have got £221, I think it is, and the coach to Dudley Kingswinford was costing me £840.
“How much money are the RFU getting from Papa John’s, with all the advertising boards around Twickenham? In the old days when you had a Cup competition, each round you’d got some (prize) money back, the more as you went on; we get nothing back.”
The RFU chose to make the Papa John’s Cup an end-of-season affair following feedback from clubs.
But an impassioned Blackburn DoR Dino Radice echoed Ingham’s frustration: “We were sold one thing and delivered another. I am just representing my rugby club and we have zero interest in going to Lymm, who we have played twice already this season. Is that appealing on an Easter Saturday?
“It isn’t what we signed up for. We should be playing the team that was first in the north east not the team that was first in our own league.”
Communication from the top, he says, is a major problem. “You can’t speak to anyone and no one will speak to you. It’s almost as like the people who should be supporting us and pushing us on are holding us back. It’s sad. They’re not interested in what I think. Every bit of communication I get from these people is the opposite of how I would do business.”
Having withdrawn from the Papa John’s Cup, Blackburn have also been told that their second and third teams can’t play in the Halbro Cup, a northwest regional competition.
Other northern clubs with big past reputations such as Liverpool St Helens and Morley have also taken the decision not to participate.
Andy Northey, a Heineken Cup winner in 2000, coached Liverpool St Helens to promotion but a
League/Cup double was never on the cards after his players invested so much of themselves during the regular season.
“The reality is, we are not going to win the Papa John’s Cup, so are we going to spend £700-800 on a bus, to play Keighley, a Level 6 side, on a 4G pitch? We wouldn’t have been able to get a competitive side together,” the former Northampton centre said.
“We are Level 7 and there is only so much in a group of lads over a year. The number of games we play in the league is enough for us without a tag-on competition like this.”