The Rugby Football Union will consider relaxing the onerous minimum standards criteria necessary for promotion to the Premiership with no teams currently eligible to go up from the Championship this year.

The final round of Championship matches will be played this weekend with both leaders Ealing Trailfinder and Doncaster Knights, the second-place team, unclear whether they are eligible for promotion. They each failed the initial inspection because their home grounds did not meet the minimum 10,000 capacity. Both teams have appealed the verdict, but will not know the outcome until well after the final matches have been played. 

If the Premiership does remain at 13 teams for next season then RFU chief executive Bill Sweeney indicated that they would be prepared to reduce the minimum capacity to 5,000 which would bring it in line with Premier League football’s entry requirements. in time for the 2023-24 season.

“One of the things that we said about this process now is that we are happy to look at the minimum criteria, and that PRL (Premiership Rugby) will be supportive, so if the general view is that we take it down to 5,000 we can make representations to the DCMS in December 2022 and it can be changed by February 2023,” Sweeney said. “I am not saying that is agreed yet, I’m saying they have agreed to re-look at it and see if they can reduce it down. We would love to have a Doncaster, Yorkshire-based Premiership club, we would love to have a Cornish Pirates. Ealing have done a fantastic job.”

Only the winners of the Championship are eligible for promotion. Ealing, who face Richmond on Saturday, have a three-point lead over Doncaster, who travel to Nottingham on Friday night. Ealing had proposed increasing their stadium capacity incrementally over three years to 10,000. In a statement earlier this month, the club stated that it was confident of a positive outcome to this appeal.

Any club coming into the Premiership would be eligible for an equal share of the Professional Game Agreement (PGA) between the RFU and Premiership Rugby, but they would not be entitled to the ‘P’ shares which govern the lucrative split of broadcasting revenue. “These (‘P’ shares) are more to do with broadcast rights,” Sweeney said. “If you are the owner of Bath, and you have invested X millions – if , say, you have invested £12m and are losing £4m every year – but you are building the broadcast rights, how you would feel if someone comes in and says, ‘I want a piece of those broadcast rights’?”