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ARE Ealing Trailfinders finally about to break the grip of an RFU-backed Premiership cartel which has now used ground criteria to block the Championship club's promotion ambitions for two seasons in succession?
There are only two avenues available to Ealing after Monday's RFU announcement that its shadowy Professional Game Board (PGB) quango deemed the club had failed the Premiership's protectionist ‘minimum standards criteria'.
Ealing can either try to mount a successful challenge to the Premiership/RFU ring-fencing regulations in law, bringing an end to the closed shop currently in place, or they accept the decision and admit that their legitimate ambitions in the here and now are dead and buried.
The individual who will make the decision is Mike Gooley, the Ealing owner whose £360 million fortune gives him the financial clout to leave the RFU with a nasty legal headache.
Given the serious shortfall in RFU finances, it is one that its chief executive, Bill Sweeney, can ill afford, especially as the responsibility for any costly legal battle over ring-fencing can be laid squarely at the door of his faltering administration of the English club game.
There is speculation that Gooley stands a very good chance of winning a court action which focuses on the RFU/Premiership's creation and abuse of a monopolistic position, and ring-fencing as the antithesis of the spirit of competitive sport.
When Championship clubs like London Welsh have threatened legal challenges in the past they have either blinked at the legal costs involved, or have been diverted by empty Premiership promises.
There have been strong indications recently that Gooley, a former SAS officer whose Trailfinders travel company underpins his wealth, has run out of patience with RFU/Premiership obstruction and will not be deflected from taking legal action.
Having pumped an estimated £30 million over 25 years into Ealing's rise from the amateur London leagues to the top flight, Gooley is determined to seek justice for the club– and for the concept of promotion and relegation. This involves discrediting the regulatory stacked deck that the RFU/Premiership has created by using inflexible and unreasonable ground criteria as the ace in its hand.
In this instance, the blocking mechanism was accompanied by weasel words from the increasingly influential Phil de Glanville. The former Bath and England centre is now not only chair of the PGB, but also a member of the 12-strong RFU Board, and the RFU Council. He is also rumoured to have been part of the ineffective anonymous panel Sweeney assembled to assess Eddie Jones' performance.
De Glanville talked glowingly about the new so-called “phased approach” in ground criteria while airbrushing the double standards at work. This was highlighted last season when the RFU/Premiership demanded that a promoted Championship club had a 10,001 capacity stadium before being promoted, even though a handful of Premiership clubs were attracting attendances of little more than 5,000.
Yet, a year ago, Ealing were denied promotion despite offering the RFU a far more sustainable three-phase model of gaining Premiership entry at 5,000, and then increasing to 7,000 in year two, and 9,000 in year three.
Lo and behold, this year the ground criteria was set at 5,000 for the 2023-24 season, but increases to 10,001 for 2024-25.
It is extraordinary that this onerous stipulation has remained in place despite the abject failure of RFU and Premiership administrations to do due regulatory diligence as Worcester and Wasps went into administration. A more gradual and generous model, such as that that exists in Premier League football and has been enjoyed by smaller clubs like Bournemouth – and could soon benefit Wrexham – makes far sounder financial sense.
So, why, having been warned of the dangers of the £350 million debt mountain still hanging over Premiership clubs, is the RFU/Premiership still prepared to pressurise promoted clubs to spend so much on ground development so quickly?
It is not surprising that this lack of financial probity and care saw Ealing refuse to take part in this season's RFU/Premiership ground criteria charade. The club also knew that in London getting planning permission for stadium building by January was a pipe dream, with construction projects in the capital requiring considerably more time than they had been allocated.
In addition, Ealing rejected the RFU/Premiership's proviso of nominating a ground share option because of its lack of commercial sustainability. It is a flawed model, with a tenant club not only paying punitive rental fees, but also losing out on hospitality, merchandising, and gate revenues.
If more evidence of ‘rotten borough' practices was needed, look at the suggestion last season that Premiership owners wanted Gooley to pay them £20 million for a ‘P' share. This cartel mechanism regulates how much a club receives from central revenue, with previously promoted clubs who have been unable to secure a ‘P' share handicapped by only receiving from a third to a half of the funding enjoyed by established clubs.
Trying to screw promoted clubs out of central revenue is a disgrace. If you reverse the mindset, the Championship clubs, and those below, should be asking for financial compensation from Premiership clubs – and the RFU – for the wreckage they have made of promotion-relegation in English rugby over the last decade
The RFU allowing protectionist Premiership owners to hijack a perfectly sound promotion-relegation system which, with equal central funding gave a club which merited promotion a chance to compete, shows how far the governing body has lost its moral compass.
It is why the game outside the Premiership should get behind Gooley's legal bid to dismantle the cartel and trash its ground criteria and ‘P' share ring-fencing apparatus.
This is not a harmonious preamble to this week's meeting between the RFU, the Premiership, and the Championship, to belatedly thrash out the detail on the new structure for professional club leagues following the Wasps and Worcester meltdowns.
However, Mike Gooley's looming intervention on behalf of Ealing should focus minds like never before.
