Hartpury head coach Mark Cornwell has called the current issues surrounding the lack of promotion and relegation between the Premiership and the Championship “baffling”.
With Championship league leaders Ealing Trailfinders not meeting the RFU‘s minimum standards criteria again earlier this month, it’s set to be the fourth year that the second-tier champions won’t get promoted.
Trailfinders, who are odds on to win the tier two title for the third time in four years, were one of three who applied for promotion and the chance to face the bottom-placed Premiership team in a play-off if they win the league.
Of the other promotion applicants, Doncaster Knights passed but are in the bottom half of the table, while third-placed Coventry also failed.
Cornwell, whose Hartpury side are enjoying their best ever season, feels the stalemate is “very strange”.
He said: “I can see it from both sides, I can see why the RFU are protecting the Premiership having lost various clubs over the years, London Welsh, Worcester, Wasps, London Irish and Jersey.
“There’s a lot of money you need to be able to compete in the Premiership and they don’t want to see teams come up, not have the funds and disappear.
“But on the flip side from a Championship point of view, it’s very odd playing in a division where you’re going to win it but there’s no reward at all, and the money that’s spent to get to the top of the Championship, or compete in the top four, can be crazy.”
Willingness to invest
Cornwell feels teams are more likely to stop investing than groundshare to meet the RFU’s minimum standards and break the deadlock, adding: “Doncaster don’t put the money into the squad that Ealing do to get near to promotion, so it’s a very baffling situation as it has been for years and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change.
“There must come a point when Ealing say we can’t afford to put money in, or they need promotion and the extra gate money to get back some of what they’ve spent.
“Ealing have to find somewhere to groundshare to get the 10,001 minimum capacity but that’s going to be an empty stadium, they don’t have the fanbase that the Championship’s best supported clubs like Bedford or Coventry do.
“I’m sure if Coventry qualified they could get some home gates close to 10,000, but Ealing don’t have the fan base. If they moved it would feel awful with very few supporters there, so that’s unlikely and we’re left with this strange situation.”
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