A FRONT ROW VIEW OF THE GAME
I cannot believe that there is any way an agreement between the Championship, Premiership and the Rugby Football Union can possibly be reached unless it also incorporates the rest of the game below.
It seems that more and more money is being earmarked for the Premiership and the elite players than realistically the Union can give while still maintaining adequate funding for the vast majority of the game.
If the RFU now make an additional financial agreement with the Championship clubs it would only need a small blip in the revenue stream to create a financial crisis for the grassroots game.
The grassroots have unfairly suffered from the financial pressures that professionalism have inflicted on the game and with control of the RFU now split between the Professional Game Board and the council representative who, when it comes to financing the game, are subservient to the PGB.
This has manifested itself in the way funding is moved from the grassroots game in order to maintain funds for the Premiership with the early agreements that funding would be at a 50/50 level, with half of the available funds going to the professional game and half to the grassroots.
This swiftly changed when the RFU had a reduction in revenues but were legally obliged to maintain its payments to the professional game and so were forced to divert money from the grassroots. The implications of this has been a drop in the number of players in the game by a considerable amount, with a number of clubs closing.
When I first started at grassroots level (or junior club rugby as it used to be called), each club ran between four and six adult teams, now they run one or two with the occasional club managing to field three if they can get a game.
Even the professional game is subject to the similar limitations, fielding just one team and an occasional academy game.
With the current ringfence of the Premiership still firmly in place, it's already impacting the financial investments for the rest of the game. Even though not broadcast in the media like when a Premiership club has troubles, it was proven by the backers of Jersey Reds pulling the plug after realising the current situation doesn't appear to be changing in the near future.
However, the idea of a play-off between the bottom Premiership club and the top Championship club instead of automatic relegation and promotion seems to be gathering momentum with those clubs at least. That said, it has a number of issues that will need to be resolved before it becomes a viable solution.
First, what is to stop a team in the bottom of the relegation zone in the Premiership from resting its best players in preparation for the play-off ? In contrast, the Championship teams will have to play their best players at every game to ensure they reach and maintain a position at the top of their league to make the play-off.
Then there is the extra money the Premiership clubs receive, even when relegated, which is far in excess of what the Championship clubs normally have to survive on. This gives relegated clubs a better if unfair chance of retaining its players and returning to the Premiership.
If the RFU wants the Championship to become more investable it must first remove much of the minimum standards criteria (MSC), simply because it is this which overtly reduces the levels of investment in the Championship.
It is also worth considering that many of the Premiership clubs never met the standards when they were put in place and have developed their stadiums while in the Premiership. Building or extending a stadium is a huge investment and once the build or extension is complete it increases the maintenance and running costs.
With currently little or no guarantee of promotion, even if you met the MSC, why would any club with limited financial resources increase its debts and costs for an under used facility?
Even the majority of the clubs currently in the Premiership seldom have sell-out crowds on a regular basis, which explains the huge debts plaguing the game.
Take my old team Wasps for an example. Had they not moved to Coventry with the massive costs of the stadium and its running costs and not being able to generate sufficient growth in support to fill the stadium, they may well have still been able to survive if not prosper a little.
It would be preferable for the Premiership to take away the minimum standards criteria and then allowed clubs free access to the Premiership based on results on the field, allowing any successful clubs the time to improve their stadiums once settled in and growing its fan base.
At the end of the day, professional rugby is a business like any other and can only grow through supply and demand. Expanding a business when there is no increase in demand will always land you in a financial mess. By allowing clubs to have time to increase the demand for space for more fans would allow them to increase capacity in line with demand.
The best solution for the game would be the RFU retur ning to a fair funding deal for the whole of the game and not just the professional game.
