For the Premiership to grow stronger the Championship must
grow stronger. Solid foundations and all
that. So what is preventing this and
what can be changed to allow the Championship to flourish? The Championship is a very good division
currently with positive attacking rugby to fore and none of the top teams
playing a keep-it-safe-kick-it-away style.
Obviously the standard and crowds are lower than the Premiership but not
by much amongst the fully professional sides who fight it out at the top of the
league. Its problems come from an almost
invisible commercial presence, with no title sponsor, no major broadcasting
partner, no central website and no central sponsorships at all. The clubs can complain that their central RFU
bung is lower than the Premierships, but the massive gap is not the £400k gap in
the bung but the £2m+ gap in centralised commercial revenue. Allowing the RFU to own the central rights is
a fatal flaw, it will never (and realistically should never) be a priority for
anyone at the RFU. The Championship must
seize their own destiny and demand to negotiate their own deals, then actually
go out and do it.
But not every problem is their own making. Premiership Rugby has out up obstacle after
obstacle to block progress and hoop after hoop they must jump through. Some form of entry criteria is certainly
needed, playing on a public park with no floodlights would damage the
professional brand of the Premiership and is rightly barred, but these criteria
need to be achievable and have realistic timeframes. 10,000 person capacity might be reasonable
for an established Premiership club but it is needless for a Championship club
or a yo-yo club. With London Welsh
blowing a significant hole in the boughs of the Minimum Standards Criteria we
may see several of the more onerous criteria relaxed to encourage clubs to
develop their own ground. Not
surprisingly Football leads the way with administrive issues (having the 90
year advantage that it does), a brief summary of their system is that there are
3 types of criteria: Qualification, Admission and Membership. Qualification is the absolute minimum to be
allowed into the league, Admission criteria are need to remain in the league
after 1 year and Membership Criteria are needed to remain in the league after 3
years. If the Championships Membership Criteria
were the same as the Premiership’s Qualification Criteria any Championship club
which has been in the league for 3 years would automatically be eligible for
promotion but would not have to further improve their ground unless they went
on to establish themselves in the Premiership.
As alluded to above this would require the championship to
impose its own minimum standards on potential members. That might be politically unpopular but if
the Championship wants to be a second professional division then it must demand
certain standards of its members. For
instances Bedford’s floodlight replacement appeal was for £75k, as Championship
rugby costs approximately £1m a year in on field costs alone requiring a club
to invest £75k in floodlights, which enable rearranged mid week games and
evening kick offs in winter, shouldn’t be an insurmountable problem for serious
contenders. Every fan whether you are
from Leicester or Wharfedale deserves good facilities to follow their team, so
minimum standards across all National Divisions should become common place.
However it is not just Minimum Standards where Premiership
Rugby could improve its treatment of Championship clubs, the thorny issue of
Promotion and Relegation often rears its ugly head, usually by the fans of
whoever happens to be bottom in March, Rugby Matters is staunchly and forever
in favour of Promotion and Relegation.
In fact given the quality of the second tier RM proposes that the top
tier returns to 2 up 2 down which it abandoned in 1999, a true meritocracy of
clubs drives up standards on the pitch as we saw during the 90’s and also
allows more clubs access to the oxygen of publicity that the Premiership
provides.
But some people will say there just isn’t a market for a
second professional league within England, RM struggles to countenance that
idea. Bristol had 8,000 people attend a
game this season and had a higher attendance at the Memorial Ground than
Saracens did at Vicarage Road. RM
believes this shows that given access to the top flight, its publicity machine and
a good stadium many clubs could achieve these sorts of figures. If Bedford had a ground fit for purpose what
attendances could they get? Newcastle
will be an instructive lesson, if they keep their crowd there will be
considerable evidence that Championship rugby does not harm your attendances
unduly even in what can be considered an outpost of the sport. Harlequins kept their support as did
Northampton and Worcester.
For the Championship to progress and challenge ProD2 as the
best second tier in Europe it must seize its destiny from the RFU and convince
the Premiership of its worth. Then we
can start worrying about how to improve the third division!
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