LBND in the Times this morning

[Heathen]

Premiership must get biggest stars in front of fans or battle to balance books will never be won
Lawrence Dallaglio
Sunday September 25 2022, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

A week that was looking so gloomy for Premiership Rugby (PR) has culminated in some thrilling matches over the past two days. I was at Franklin’s Gardens on Saturday where Leicester pulled off a superb comeback to beat Northampton Saints (how good to see that the scrum can still be such a potent weapon). In fact you could have taken any sports fan to any of the five Gallagher Premiership fixtures this weekend and they would have come away thinking rugby is a great spectacle.

None of this will provide much cheer to fans of Worcester Warriors, who could see their club suspended from the Premiership on Monday, or indeed supporters of my own club, Wasps, who are also battling to resolve their financial troubles.

I can’t comment on Worcester but I will say that I expect Wasps to find a way out of their predicament. The situation is a bit different from that of the Warriors, given there are other enterprises — all equally badly affected by the loss of revenue brought on by Covid — that are folded into the same business as the Wasps rugby club. It’s complicated because of the debt structure with which the club were bought but there is no reason it can’t be a viable business. If the move to Coventry hadn’t taken place in 2014 then the administrators might have been called in a few years ago.

What last week has underlined is the need for the people who run the game to work more closely together. We have always known that club finances are precarious and that unless you have a very wealthy benefactor able to cover millions of pounds of losses — as Bath do with Bruce Craig and Saracens did with Nigel Wray — the battle of balancing the books is a constant one. If we were starting again, I’m sure we would look at a ten-club Premiership with bigger squads. But we are, as they say, where we are.

In these circumstances it is baffling that we see so little of the Premiership’s best assets — its leading England players — on show week in, week out. When I was playing it was the norm for England internationals to come up against one another regularly at club level. I used to love this period in the season: come flying out of the traps and lay down a few markers so that when you meet up with your opponents at Pennyhill Park in November it’s you who’s got the bragging rights.

This issue was brought into sharp focus last weekend when Harlequins’ Marcus Smith had to sit out a mouthwatering clash with his rival for the England No 10 jersey, Owen Farrell, of Saracens. I know player welfare was cited for him being held back and I understand that concern. But we need more joined-up thinking, more discretion to ensure that a potentially great advertisement for the game isn’t scuppered again by rigid bureaucracy.

The Premiership needs to put its stars in front of the fans more regularly and it needs to have them connect with those fans. We know that supporters not only want to see them but want to know them and to like them.

Are the clubs doing enough to make that happen? Possibly. Does PR have a marketing plan to back that up? I’d like to see it. Has the RFU done its bit when the players are on England duty? Not enough for my liking. This is nuts because everyone knows that rugby always has to operate in football’s shadow.

There are other issues working against the big promotional push that professional rugby needs. I know of incidents where players have been approached to appear in initiatives to promote the sport as a whole and their agents have responded by quoting astronomical sums for appearance money.

They don’t seem to understand that if you grow the game, more money comes in and everyone gets richer.

[Westy68]

It’s exactly what I have been saying, you can’t have the top players missing for half a season.

The top players need to be more approachable, which was the case a few seasons ago. Even when I’ve done corporate, years ago you were allowed to mix with the players after the game, that is harder nowadays.

A ten team league with a mid season break for the 6 nations. Stop getting overseas players and paying them a fortune and then letting them go for half a season.

[Shugs]

Completely agree. A way around this must be found.

[Sliminator]

Reading LBNDs article reminds me of what I've been thinking about for a while is a ring fenced 2 league professional structure with promotion and relegation (2 or 3 teams each year) run as a single entity, both televised, sharing the TV money, maybe 10 teams each. With a cross the league cup competition. Kind of a smaller version of the top14 and proD2

There are bound to be problems with it.

[Bloke in North Dorset]

Worth a try. You’d have to do away with ground capacity and other restrictions for a few years at least.

I can’t see the top clubs wanting to take a reduction in TV money.

[Peej]

Didn't Lol also write in the Times a few weeks ago that we were on solid ground and everything was fine?

[InBetweenWasp]

Reading LBNDs article reminds me of what I've been thinking about for a while is a ring fenced 2 league professional structure with promotion and relegation (2 or 3 teams each year) run as a single entity, both televised, sharing the TV money, maybe 10 teams each. With a cross the league cup competition. Kind of a smaller version of the top14 and proD2

There are bound to be problems with it.

This is my preference as well - Make 2x smaller divisions with promotion and relegation.  I'm less keen on conferences and would rather see a traditional league. 

Have a break from Premiership Rugby during the International period for the league and instead play an A-League/Premiership Cup type competition.  Having a break in club rugby during the AIs and 6N would mean losing 4x game weekends in the Autumn and 5x in the Spring.

I think that means we'd need 2x 9 Team Divisions.  Take the current Prem 13 (assuming all 13 come out intact) and throw in Ealing, Doncaster, Pirates, Jersey + Bedford/Nottingham/Jersey (or whatever it should be based on league finish).  Have promotion/relegation for both divisions.

In tandem, reduce the salary cap further to force a dispersion of talent across the league.  We're seeing the Chiefs squad of the last 2-3 years being quickly changed as the cap bites with Hill and O'Flaherty last year, plus Simmons and potentially Nowell/Slade exiting as well. 

Short term it would mean reduced competitiveness in the Champions Cup, but longer term I think we'd end up with a more compelling competition for TV rights, more financially viable teams and also more teams capable of sustaining professional rugby with a better geographic spread across the Country.

Perhaps most importantly, I think the guarantee that the star international players (if fit) will be playing (and not rested/on Interntional Duties) will encourage more casual fans down to watch games to see players that they might not be able to get to Twickenham to watch. 

Happy to be shot down if people think I'm wide of the mark, but that's my starting thought.  I don't think more games (as the Clubs seem to want) is really the answer.

[wasps]

I do like the idea of 10 team league.
18 games per session instead of 24 certainly solves some player welfare issues.


Obviously the first big question is how to choose the 10 teams.
That alone would likely stop it from happening.

[InBetweenWasp]

I do like the idea of 10 team league.
18 games per session instead of 24 certainly solves some player welfare issues.


Obviously the first big question is how to choose the 10 teams.
That alone would likely stop it from happening.

Well, good question although I think we need to expand the number of teams but do that by creating 2x smaller divisions. 

So in my plan, it would be the Top 9 teams finishing in the Prem would make up the 'top' division.  Then after that you have the remaining 4 teams, plus the top 5 in the Championship (or the 2x Welsh Teams plus the top 3-5 depending on what happens to us/Warriors).

Reduce the salary cap to, say, £4-4.5m down from £5.0m to disperse the star/international players across the 18 teams from the existing 13.  That should help with finances as well as begin to bridge the gap between the upper Championship Teams and the mid-lower Prem Teams.

In theory, I think it ticks a lot of the boxes.  Of course though, there's complexities like:

-- Clubs not wanting to disband squads due to a reduced cap
-- They'll be 13x PRL shareholders (or do we have 14?) how do we make 18x shareholders (and reduce the existing club income unless TV rights are automatically increased)
-- Will the remaining Championship Clubs really be happy with this? - Do we need to consider promotion/relegation from the remaining Championship teams as they are today?

[hookender]

Not a bad proposal ,inbetweener, though I think it would be better for the divisions to be 10 purely for number of games and not have the moans about a fallow week and when it falls in the season for the club. Would you still keep playoff games at end of season?

 As for the issue of prem shares, IMO the easiest thing would be for them to be scrapped and the income earned by PRL given to clubs based on league position. Can’t see the shareholding clubs agreeing to this but would give end of season league position a certain edge if it meant an extra 100k in bank

[InBetweenWasp]

Not a bad proposal ,inbetweener, though I think it would be better for the divisions to be 10 purely for number of games and not have the moans about a fallow week and when it falls in the season for the club. Would you still keep playoff games at end of season?

 As for the issue of prem shares, IMO the easiest thing would be for them to be scrapped and the income earned by PRL given to clubs based on league position. Can’t see the shareholding clubs agreeing to this but would give end of season league position a certain edge if it meant an extra 100k in bank

The only problem with 10 is that you end up with another 2 weeks of games needed.  So with 10 teams you'd have 18 games, so it's reduced by 6 on the current number but means you'd lose the internationals for at least 3 game weekends + training camps, which I think is important to avoid.

Perhaps it should be 2 Divisions of 8 Teams each.  2 up, 2 down and a grand final for the top 2 teams of the top division.  That means 14 league games, so reduced by around 40%.  Keeps internationals in the fold.  Prem Cup games could become meaningful during intl periods.  Has the jeopardy of promotion/relegation.  Doesn't dilute income as much as 18-20 teams.  Could allow for reduce squad sizes and still dispersion of top-tier talent meaning easier to balance the books.

I think there's legs in it, but lots to thrash out still.

[Vespula Vulgaris]

A ten team league is fine if your team in one of the ten, not so great if it isn't.

It wouldn't be a done deal for us to be in the top ten these days.

[Shugs]

Can’t see a ten teamer working myself. Most teams wouldn’t be able to survive on 9 home games a season even with a lower cap.

[Neils]

Noticing on Skulls Wasps a positive statement about the bonds to bondholders.

[Vespula Vulgaris]

I had an email from Hargreaves Lansdown today that included the following line:

“The Issuer has made progress with these alternative options and confirms that it has received an offer which would see the Bonds fully redeemed on completion of this refinancing. Discussions with this lender are at an advanced stage.

Which does indeed sound positive, and in line with what Derek and the rest of the board have said.