Nick Cain: Bruce Craig’s protectionism is not what we want

The decision by Bath owner Bruce Craig to break cover by jumping on the franchise bandwagon this week is no revelation, and his protectionist arguments for a closed shop as the ultimate fix for the debt-laden Premiership 10 are utterly unconvincing.

After 15 years of uphill skiing trying to assemble a winning Bath team – and spending hand over fist on high profile coaches and marquee players in pursuit of it – Craig finally has the big prize of a Premiership title in his sights.

He also clearly believes that Bath’s rise gives him more clout to call for an end to promotion-relegation at the top end of the English club game, despite having played his part in the rampant wage bill inflation that has undermined the financial viability of the Premiership.

However, whether or not Bath secure their first English league title in 30 years, the pharmaceutical millionaire’s promised land of a franchise future in which the Premiership’s chosen few corner the resources of the RFU in perpetuity, will kick off a conflict which is likely to dwarf the team-building difficulties he has faced as a club owner.

Will be challenged

This response from the Nottingham chairman Alistair Bow should leave Craig in no doubt that he will be challenged at every turn by clubs in the Championship and the community game: “If they go down the franchise route the immediate and most important question is, should not what we want the RFU member clubs subsidise this move?

Should they be funding these private franchises at an annual rate of £33m of the union’s money, when it should be used to fund the member clubs remaining in the pyramid system?”

It is notable that Craig, below, one of the wealthiest Premiership owners, is not in alignment in terms of his views on promotion-relegation with the three richest club owners in the European rugby.

The men at the top of the rugby union rich list are all backers of clubs in France‘s Top 14, with Jacky Lorenzetti of Racing 92 (net worth c. £3.4 billion) in first place, Mohed Altrad of Montpellier (c. £2.6 billion) in second, and Hans-Peter Wild of Stade Francais (c. £2.5 billion) in third, so minted that Craig’s c. £260m fortune does not put him close to being in their ballpark.

“The Bath owner’s decision to back a franchise system will be challenged”

Yet, while Craig is agitating for a permanent ring-fence which will give him an unchallengeable place at the top table of the English game for the foreseeable future, both Lorenzetti and Wild are signatories to meritocratic rules in which they accept the risk of relegation.

At the moment, both owners are facing a relegation battle on the other side of The Channel, with Racing 11th in the Top 14 table and Stade Francais 12th.

Most people who support competitive professional sport would say that is exactly as it should be. This includes Bath supporters who were quoted in media coverage of the club finishing bottom of the Premiership in 2022 – having won only four league matches and been beaten by more than 40 points on 13 occasions – that they deserved to be relegated.

Unlike Craig, those fans recognised that jeopardy is an important component in keeping professional sport competitive, and that Bath had been very fortunate to escape due to the controversial RFU Covid moratorium on Premiership promotion-relegation.

It is a mindset that accepts that what a club does on the pitch should be the main arbiter of where it stands in the league structure – and if it is not sufficiently competitive it drops down, and gets the chance to rebuild. By that same principle, no club should seek to deny others the same chance to progress that they have enjoyed.

However, Craig, in an interview in The Times this week in which he extols the virtues of franchises, seems oblivious to the existence of rugby union outside the Premiership.

Outside of the Prem

This is strange given that Bath, a team he has supported man and boy, were among England‘s middling amateur clubs until the arrival of Jack Rowell as a galvanising coaching force led to a triumphal procession of trophies from 1984 to 1998.

Since then Bath have won nothing bar the second-tier European Challenge Cup in 2008. The point is that the club had its ups and downs before Craig appeared, and will continue to have them when he is no longer owner.

The same applies to all the other clubs who are now trying to establish themselves as immovable franchises. Bristol have been up and down from the Championship like a yo-yo since the English leagues were introduced in 1987, as have Newcastle.

Exeter were entrenched in the lower leagues until they were promoted in 2010, Saracens were relegated and promoted while playing on a council pitch at Bramley Road in front of a few handfuls of supporters until Nigel Wray came along in 1995. Harlequins (2005), Northampton (2007), and Sale have all been relegated.

Right to Promotion

Crucially, all of them had the right to promotion including Saracens after their salary cap relegation in 2020.

Craig and his fellow Premiership owners/backers now want to end promotion for good, denying others the same rights from which they have benefited.

Almost a year ago Craig did another interview, this time in The Telegraph just after Bath lost narrowly to Northampton in the Premiership final.

In it he said of the club’s trials and tribulations: “Even though there were some really hard times and decisions that did not go our way – and maybe some bad ones too – they all stuck at it. I stick at it. I don’t give up. That’s life. You’re down, you’re up…”

There was no mention of closed-shop franchises, or of denying others the right to be down, and get back up. Craig admits to making some bad decisions, and this one fits the bill.