Cornish Pirates chairman Paul Durkin has branded the RFU “the only body in sport who haven't reinstated Covid cuts”.
Durkin took to the Mennaye Field pitch during Pirates' Meet The Players night on Thursday to reassure fans that the financial stability of the club is the number one priority in these uncertain times for the second tier of professional rugby.
“We are not going to put this club at risk but there's a lot of uncertainty out there,” he told them after a summer which has seen a number of key players move on both for financial and ambition reasons.
The cloud hanging over Pirates in recent years has been the constant delays in securing a new ground to fulfil the requirements for eventual promotion to the Premiership.
With the funding promised by former prime minister David Cameron never being delivered and Cornwall Council withdrawing the financial support they pledged, the Pirates have been left to go it alone.
Finally, after years of false hope, work has started on the new ground at Truro, albeit a much scaled down version of the originally planned “Stadium for Cornwall”, which will see soccer club Truro City, currently playing their “home” matches 78 miles away in Plymouth, as the first occupants.
“One thing that has started to move is that finally there is a new facility being built up at Truro,” said Durkin, “but the priority is that the football club needs to come back into Cornwall.
“The design and everything that's going with it is for Pirates as well and we will make a decision when it's right for us to go there but we don't know when because the structure of rugby is changing and will change.
“Probably from the start of the season after next there should be what's been called Prem 1 and Prem 2. Prem 1 will be the 10 teams currently in the Premiership with probably 12 clubs in Prem 2, from the Championship.
“The thing we don't know are what minimum standards are going to be.”
He added: “The elephant in the room with any new structure is funding. Every club lost half a million pounds a year three years ago because of Covid and that has not been re-instated.
“I think the RFU is the only governing body in sport that didn't reinstate the Covid cuts on top of the original ones. So it's going to be very important to understand how much funding is there.”
Pirates have launched a crowdfunding appeal and Durkin said: “We thank everybody who is helpingwith that. We need time to understand what the future is going to be like for rugby – not just for Pirates.
“We are working hard on that all the time to get some answers. It's the whole structure of the game. Firstly, people need to know what they are getting from the governing body and what we need to raise ourselves.”
He described the whole saga as “very frustrating” but added: “I do believe we are making some progress, albeit very slowly.”
