It has been a long-term aim of several Premiership clubs to turn the A League into the second tier of English rugby at the expense of the Championship. In 2016, Nigel Melville, the RFU’s then professional rugby director, proposed formalising loan partnership arrangements between Premiership and Championship clubs, but this was sunk by top-flight opposition who wanted to prioritise the A League.
However, there is a split within the Premiership about the merits of the plan. With squad sizes reducing because of the reduction in the salary cap to £5million this season, many clubs struggle to consistently field an A League side without resorting to ‘guest’ players. One proposed split would be seven Premiership reserves sides with five “aspirational” Championship teams.
The changes would come into effect for the 2023/24 season to coincide with the renewal of the heads of agreement between Premiership Rugby and the RFU which determines England player release.
Meanwhile Ealing and Doncaster Knights, who meet this Saturday in a top of the table clash, are anxiously awaiting the RFU Board’s approval for promotion to the Premiership. Both have proposed installing temporary seating to meet the 10,000-capacity minimum threshold but Ealing have some concerns over planning permission. With no relegation from the Premiership on hold, either Doncaster or Ealing would become the top flight’s 14th team.
Second tier is breeding ground for talent – not some plaything for RFU
Analysis by Daniel Schofield
Has a league ever been so devalued yet proved so valuable as the Championship?
According to research by Bedford Blues last month, 49 per cent of players who featured in the 13th round of Premiership matches had Championship experience. From Eddie Jones’ matchday squad for England’s opening Six Nations match against Scotland, 15 players had cut their teeth in the Championship. As a breeding ground for young and even slighter older talent it is second to none.
To pick one of several dozen examples let’s take Ollie Chessum, England’s most recently capped player. Around 16, he did not make the grade at Leicester’s academy. As my colleague Charlie Morgan recently detailed, Chessum was picked up by Nottingham and developed the fundamentals of his game in the dog-eat-dog world of men’s rugby until he was ready to be re-signed by Leicester. Mark Atkinson and Nic Dolly, freshly capped by England, also owe their careers to their spells in the Championship. Indeed, Eddie Jones is known to value those players who have done the hard yards in the second tier.
Putting aside the red-rose tinted spectacles for a moment, the Championship is also just a great place to watch a decent standard of rugby at affordable prices. Bedford and Coventry, two clubs with no immediate aspirations of promotion and who have far bigger neighbours on their doorstep, regularly draw crowds of 2,500. Jersey Reds, Doncaster and Cornish Pirates provide an excellent geographical spread of the country and this season’s title race has been wonderfully competitive.
And yet the Championship seems to be treated with a disrespect bordering on disdain by Premiership Rugby and the Rugby Football Union. In 2020, the RFU central funding was slashed by almost half to £288,000 per year, forcing many clubs to abandon full-time models. To propose a hybrid league featuring Premiership reserve teams will seem an insult too far for many fans.
Perhaps the RFU missed the widespread opprobrium that Pep Guardiola’s proposal to parachute Premier League B teams into the Football League received. The very notion of replacing established, historic clubs with, say, Worcester’s stiffs will be highly unpopular with traditional supporters. It is going to take the Don Draper of marketing geniuses to make it appear anything other than the A League in disguise.
The RFU will counter that leaving the Championship in its present rundown state was not an option (probably true), that Championship clubs are not financially sustainable (broadly true but conveniently ignoring the amount of money Premiership clubs haemorrhage) and that the league struggles to attract broadcast and sponsorship interest (true, but the RFU is responsible for this).
Their strongest argument is that there is a bottleneck of talent that is not receiving sufficient gametime in Premiership academies. Back in 2016, Nigel Melville, then the RFU’s professional rugby director and now chairman of Premiership Rugby, stated that players in the England Under-20 side can expect to play only 880 minutes a season, the equivalent of 11 full games. This amount of playing time will have significantly decreased in the past two years because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Giving these young players a more structured schedule featuring Championship teams looks like a solution.
But it misses a fundamental point. Yes, game time is important but so is the experience of playing for a Championship club. Scores of England players have spoken about how crucial going on loan has been for the development in going to an alien environment called the “real world”. Suddenly, they do not have an academy coach micromanaging every minute of their day and they are playing alongside older players whose livelihoods depend on the result at the weekend.
This was England prop Will Stuart’s reaction to 2020 budget cuts. “The Wild West is getting even wilder. I can’t stress how important my time at @NottinghamRugby was for me. This is pure garbage for lads who put their bodies on the line for already laughable levels of player welfare.”
It is clear that the A League proposal is being pushed upon the RFU by certain Premiership owners who dream of monetising a second league so they would have a home game every week. Great, in theory, but let’s just see how the practice pans out.
Indeed, a lot of the details and principles deserve to be heard. However, it does feel like the Championship is a character-filled, listed building that has been left derelict by its owners so they can knock it down and build some garish modern flats in its place. Only future generations will be able to judge the wisdom of that decision.
