Seems like another move to kill off rugby below the premiership.
Clubs don't have enough players to fulfill A-league fixtures, so their squads will have to grow - and stop sending juniors out to the championship to get game time; so Champ squads will have to grow, but to do so with less funding, and less help.
Whi is it that English rugby just cant do joined up thinking?
15ish years ago, there was reasonable (not great, but reasonable) funding in the Champ, especially comparative to the Prem, and there was pretty good competition there, and many clubs with ambition for promotion.
But we refused to throw them even one single bone.
We crooked the scales in favour of the demoted team, we increased the Prem salary cap out of reach for anyone else, we insisted on MSCs that were unrealistic (and yet 4-5 Champ clubs still kept plans in place to reach them for a fair while).
We denied them a ***le sponsor, we denied them a TV contract, we denied them a realistic shot at joining the closed club (Exeter left it later than ideal), and more recently, we've made them reliant on loanees from the Prem - and we kept at it until they gave up and investors quit.
15ish years ago, we needed to bring the Champ within PRL, shrink the Prem to 8-10 clubs (no Prem rugby during the international windows), with 14-12 in the Champ (RFU to temporarily fund 1-2 based on location if there weren't enough ambitious clubs who wanted to join of their own accord [though I don't think that would have been necessary 15ish years ago]); TV deal that covers both, and a Cup competition that includes all 22 clubs (+ 2 invitational teams to make the numbers work (Wales/Scotland?), but don't use them to shut out the lower clubs). Increased promotion / relegation spots, and massively decrease the "disaster" of relegation.
Pseudo-ring-fence at that level, between fully professional and semi-professional would have been valid - with formalised criteria for ambitious lower clubs and / or failing higher clubs to be welcomed / ditched.
A pyramidal structure, with increased quality throughout, and proper links within, proper funding, support and academies.
But no the 13 PRL clubs had to stick together and refuse to share their pie; and did everything they could to ringfence themselves - a plan they're continuing with.
www.telegraph.co.uk
