THE fantasists who believe that Premiership Rugby is ‘on fire’ with great games of the highest quality are in urgent need of a reality check.There is an agenda here, because many of those turning up the volume and frequency in calling for an end to promotion-relegation either have very strong links to Premiership clubs, or are broadcasters with a vested interest in hyping ‘the product’.
They are also aware that we are getting very close to one of the biggest game-changing decisions to the English game since it went professional 26 years ago. The decision in question will be made at the RFU Council meeting on June 11, when the neutered 65-member body chaired by Jeff Blackett will be asked to end promotion-relegation between the Premiership and the Championship for three years.
It is expected to do this by rubberstamping a recommendation from an RFU Board which is facing serious questions over its own competence and democratic mandate.
If the Council votes it through, as it did in February by introducing a oneseason moratorium on relegation, the block on an open gangway will be extended to four years.
No one in the Championship, or among the other 1,400 community clubs that are the shareholders of the RFU, should be under any illusions about what is at stake. Although it has been dressed up as a moratorium on promotion and relegation – or temporary suspension – it is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
The suspension is the first stage of a ring-defence which will be used by Premiership club owners to create a closed franchise system similar to the NFL in American Football. This will guarantee the 13 Premiership clubs a licence to be in the top league of English club structure in perpetuity – unless they go bankrupt.
The threat of insolvency is ironic, because the ring-fence system the Premiership owners are pursuing is not only morally bankrupt but commercially flawed, and will hasten the Premiership’s decline as a league that should be galvanising and growing the support base for Rugby Union in England.
Here’s why. It opposes what most supporters want, which is a professional sport with a competitive structure that includes merit-based promotion as well as the jeopardy of relegation for unsuccessful clubs.
The virulent opposition from fans, coaches, players, and the media, to football’s recent European Super League venture was an emphatic rejection of the closedshop culture which Premiership Rugby has embraced.
The main objections are that dispensing with promotion-relegation leads to a devaluing of the competitive element that fans pay to see, and that the owners of 13 Premiership clubs are hijacking a game that belongs first and foremost to those fans, players, coaches, referees, and the army of unpaid volunteers in clubs throughout the land, who support Rugby Union.
The decline in the competitiveness of the Premiership since relegation was removed has been reflected already in the absence of any English club in the semi-finals of this season’s Euro- pean Cup for the first time in 12 years. There were five Premiership clubs in the last 16 played at the start of April – three with home advantage – but only Exeter and Sale progressed, before being dumped out in the quarter-finals.
In the three months since relegation was removed from a league which boasted it was the toughest, most competitive in the world – with close scorelines the rule, and the everpresent risk that ‘anyone can beat anyone’– we have witnessed a much more predictable competition with an increasing number of lop-sided winning margins. Rugby Union is at its best when tries have to be earned because of the keen balance between good attack and good defence.
Otherwise we lapse into rugby basketball of the ‘you score, we score’ variety, which was commonplace in Super Rugby and contributed to its demise.
Even close games in which attacks run riot, like the recent Harlequins 48 Wasps 46 result, have the potential to rapidly lose their lustre if they are not underpinned by a hard competitive edge in defence.
It was notable also that of the five other games in Round 18 (May 9) all were won by big margins – 16 points, 20 points, 24 points, 25 points, and 31 points – despite there being only four rounds left.
It tightened up last weekend, but only because most of the matches still involved a chance of qualification for the European Cup, following the new policy of extending the number of Premiership qualifiers to eight clubs.
This is two thirds of the league, which, by definition, means that the European Cup is no longer ‘the best of the best’. This contradicts what the Premiership owners demanded when they ditched the old ERC model in 2014 and replaced it with what they trumpeted would be a more elite EPCR tournament.
Now, like the Premiership, it is a watered-down version of its former self, opening the door to a quasi-competitive sporting culture in which clubs can shrug their shoulders and say, “next year”, when the going gets tough.
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