London Irish will be suspended from next season’s Premiership unless the proposed takeover by a US consortium is completed by 30 May or the club provides proof of funding for the entire 2023-24 campaign, the Rugby Football Union has warned.
The ultimatum from the RFU comes amid fears the protracted takeover will drag on over the summer and into next season, and heightens the prospect of a third club being thrown out of the Premiership in eight months.
The RFU cited the need for certainty for players, staff and fans of the club and, although insiders have been hopeful the takeover will be completed, the RFU’s intervention is a deeply worrying sign given the impending deadline.
For Irish to avoid being kicked out of the Premiership, the takeover must be completed and approved by the RFU with the buyers undertaking to provide all required working capital to meet the club’s obligations for at least next season.
Failing that, the Exiles must demonstrate capacity to fund the club next term. Expulsion would be a colossal blow for the Premiership given the demises of Wasps and Worcester this season.
This month the current owner, Mick Crossan, finally stepped in to belatedly pay the players’ April wages after the delay led the squad to consider boycotting their final match of the season, to demand physical proof they were insured to take part in it and to consider submitting breach-of-contract letters.
It remains to be seen if Crossan can continue to fund the club next term if the takeover is not completed before the RFU’s deadline, given Irish have debts of around £30m and he has been looking to sell all season. That they are tenants of the Gtech Community Stadium makes them a less attractive proposition for investors, though their state-of-the-art training centre in Sunbury is an impressive asset.
Well-placed sources have expressed considerable scepticism that the takeover will go through, not least because financial clouds have been looming over Irish since October when staff members began actively seeking alternative employment. Against that backdrop their fifth-place finish was all the more impressive, but a trying campaign has taken its toll and the relief following their final match was apparent.
The RFU is evidently desperate to avoid a repeat of the Worcester situation, so too Premiership Rugby which, along with the union and the Rugby Players’ Association, has been applying pressure on Irish to provide certainty.
There is desperation to avoid another club going bust even though a 10-team league has been identified as the optimal solution from 2024 onwards.
Worcester’s problems surfaced last summer but they were allowed to begin the 2022-23 season, only to be thrown out in October. Wasps soon followed, plunging the Premiership into crisis.
An RFU statement read: “If the club fails to meet these conditions it will be suspended from participating in the Premiership [and other competitions] in season 2023-24 to avoid a scenario where the club enters insolvency mid-season, with the corresponding and substantial impact that has on players, staff, and fans, as well as on the remainder of the league.”
The RFU went on to say that the deadline was set “to give enough time for the buyers to provide the information needed and for the transaction to complete” but the clock is ticking, given that leaves the buyers only 10 working days. All the more so because the RFU is also under pressure to complete its due diligence after the chief executive, Bill Sweeney, was accused of being “asleep on the job”.
Sweeney and Premiership Rugby’s Simon Massie-Taylor were blamed for “failure on an epic scale” at a parliamentary inquiry into the demises of Worcester and Wasps.
