Plenty of arguments are raging in rugby union and the next big battle is for the soul of the English game. There is recognition on all sides that something has to change. As Bristol’s director of rugby, Pat Lam, said last week, it has become a source of global curiosity. “Everyone around the world knows England have the most rugby players and the most resources,” he said. “They’re envious. So how are we struggling? You have to ask the question.”
What suits Lam and his club’s wealthy owner, Steve Lansdown, however, does not necessarily suit a Premiership rival like Newcastle, whose playing budget for next season is understood to have shrunk appreciably. Where in all this are the most fundamental of questions? What is best for the health of the whole game, not just the high-profile apex of the pyramid, and what, exactly, is ultimately the aim of the entire exercise?
This sort of debate is not exclusive to England, of course. It is raging in Wales, Australia and pretty much everywhere else outside France and Ireland, who currently seem to have multiple important boxes ticked. It also clearly has to encompass women’s rugby and cannot be viewed in isolation from the player welfare imperatives that are shaping the sport’s future.
Ultimately, though, it boils down to deciding what matters most. Nowhere is that debate currently more starkly evident than in England’s second-tier Championship, full of historic clubs trying to preserve what is left of their proud heritage. It is reaching the point where many of them are wondering if the Rugby Football Union actually cares about preserving them at all.
Listen, for example, to Nick Johnston, chief executive of Coventry. As he said this week, he genuinely believes the governing body has been trying “to run them into the ground”. Johnston has been on both sides of the fence, having previously worked at Sale, Northampton and Worcester, but is beginning to reach the end of his tether. Clubs like Coventry, he says, are simply seeking to do what they have done since 1874. “We’re not trying to solve the political situation in the Middle East,” he says. “We’re just trying to promote the game.”
Because, as he emphasises, if 149-year-old clubs such as Coventry are left to wither on the vine, it will decimate the second tier of English rugby, supposedly the springboard to the top level. Where does the RFU plan to train its next professional players, coaches, referees and even administrators? Is a world without Premiership relegation really a better one? Can England now sustain only, at most, 10 professional clubs and, if so, how smart is it to cut them off from their feeder roots?
The counter-arguments are familiar enough. There is insufficient money in the central pot. The Championship clubs do not currently attract enough supporters to be viable professional businesses. But then you listen to Johnston as he outlines his mission statement at Coventry: “One of our biggest strategic objectives is to become the best professional community-centric club in the country.
“What is the purpose of English rugby? Our purpose is to create the next generation of players, coaches and administrators to go and help England rugby succeed at the top of the world. I care about this massively. I really do believe in this league. It is the foundation of us growing the game.”
Accordingly, the club runs its own academy and are excited about an 18-year-old fly-half coming through the ranks. Next month they will be launching Coventry Netball, with plans to build a hotel also well advanced. Currently third in the league, with Wasps having vacated the city, they see no reason why they cannot continue to grow. “We have ambition but it comes with growth at the right time, not investing aimlessly,” Johnston says.
The most serious threat to their future, however, appears to be their own national union. As newly promoted Caldy discovered at their first meeting, annual central funding is already so minimal that, after deducting insurance and travel costs, barely £40,000 remains. There is talk of reverting to two regional leagues but Johnston believes this would be a disaster for England’s most obvious talent pathway. “I think we’re the glue if they get it right,” he says. “I want our league to stay connected with the grassroots. I’d like a women’s Championship as well.”
Championship insiders believe Premiership clubs should have to pay for their players to enjoy game time in the Championship. In recent weeks London Scottish have fielded more Harlequins-registered loanees than they have their own players. There is also another proposal for an eight-team second tier doing the rounds: if the biggest Championship clubs – Ealing, Jersey, Coventry, Cornish Pirates, Doncaster, Bedford and Nottingham plus, potentially, Wasps – all put in £1m apiece initially, might the RFU and Premier Rugby then match it? “You could make it part of the PGA [Professional Game Agreement] to fund a sustainable pathway league,” says Simon Halliday, part of the Championship negotiating team. “Incentivise us to play younger players, fund it properly and then you’ve got half a chance of rebuilding some of the development pathways that are totally broken.”
If that is not the plan, Halliday believes the RFU should be upfront about it. “They would be destroying proper rugby heartlands that allow young players to develop. But if they think the Championship is not a pathway, then be honest and say so. At the moment they’re just saying: ‘Keep going lads, but it’s going to take you years.’” The battle for the English rugby’s soul is not quite over yet.
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