General Category > Wasps Rugby Discussion

Three Changes Needed? - Telegraph

(1/4) > >>

Neils:

The three systemic changes English rugby needs after France fiasco

The new Professional Game Agreement offers a golden opportunity to reform the domestic game
By Daniel Schofield, Deputy Rugby Union Correspondent 14 March 2023 ? 8:00am


English rugby has spent more time at a crossroads than Nolly Gordon. Invariably it has chosen the wrong path. Or more typically no path at all, dithering over and deferring decisions. The record 53-10 home defeat to France is not the first ?wake-up call? that Twickenham has heard only to press the snooze button. Yet in a season in which the Premiership has lost Wasps and Worcester not to mention a host of England internationals such as Jack Nowell, the urgency to act has never been greater.

Current negotiations between the Rugby Football Union and Premiership Rugby over a new Professional Game Agreement, which is due to come into force in 2024, represent the perfect opportunity to repair rather than paper over the structural cracks in the English game. 

Empower the PGB

The relationship between Premiership Rugby and the RFU has long been characterised as a zero-sum game. We win, you lose. More often than not it is the players who are pulled from pillar to post.

The appointment of Simon Massie-Taylor as Premiership Rugby CEO has improved those relations, but if English rugby is ever to fully realise its resources then club and country must pull in the same direction. That means creating one body to control elite men?s rugby.

In theory, this body already exists in the form of the Professional Game Board, which has representatives from the RFU, Premiership Rugby and the Rugby Players? Association but it lacks teeth. Too many decisions on the future of the professional game need to be signed off by the RFU council, which is dominated by the community game.

A thriving Premiership will create a thriving national team and vice versa. This was the exact message that the French sports minister delivered to the FFR and LNR at the start of this World Cup cycle and after decades of mutual antagonism it has been acted upon.

For this new PGB, invite some independent heavy hitters to cut down on the horse-trading. Give it a total mandate to make decisions in the best interests of English elite rugby rather than trying to gain the collective approval of 11 millionaire club owners and the RFU council, which is akin to herding cats.

This current strategy of kicking cans down the road may defer sometimes painful conversations but sometimes pain is necessary. Which brings us to?.

Reduce the Premiership to 10 teams

Everyone knows taking the league from 11 to 10 teams makes sense. At a stroke, you would remove the overlap with the international windows which is the single biggest cause of friction between club and country since professionalism came into being.

Of course, there needs to be a fall guy. Given the cliff edge in funding to the Championship (more on that later) there is not a long line of volunteers. Barring another financial meltdown, there will be 11 clubs for the 2023/24 season, but there is certainly a groundswell of opinion to bring the Premiership down to ten teams for the 2024/25 season. How that is achieved is less clear.

One Darwinian school of thinking believes that it is just a matter of time before another club follows Worcester and Wasps into administration, which is a distinct possibility as the Department for Digital, Culture and Sport starts calling in its Covid Recovery loans. Another proposal gaining traction in certain WhatsApp groups is for the 11 clubs to pool a growing pot of money until one team agrees to take a form of voluntary redundancy.

Fewer matches does not mean less money for the remaining ten clubs. On the contrary, there is a confidence among many clubs that marketing matches as prestige fixtures to both punters and broadcasters would become a lot easier, particularly without the clash with the internationals. Plus top-end players would benefit from more rest periods.

Provide more playing opportunities

There is a simultaneous problem in English rugby where some players play far too much rugby and others, especially youngsters, far too little. Nothing is quite as important to a player?s development as game time but particularly during the last couple of seasons some incredibly promising rising stars have gone for weeks without a match.

This is a prime consideration in the drafting of a report on the future of the Championship that should be released in the next few weeks. As a vehicle for development, the Championship polishes more rough diamonds than Hatton Garden. Ollie Chessum, England?s breakout player of the Six Nations Championship (admittedly not the highest of bars), could have been lost to the game had Nottingham not picked him up after being released by Leicester?s academy.

And yet the Championship has been treated with all the care of an unwanted pot plant. Proper funding and marketing of a revamped second tier would not only increase this pipeline but reduce the cliff edge effect of relegation from the Premiership.

There are other ways youngsters could get more meaningful game time including in a revised Premiership Cup competition for up-and-coming players, which could take place in the international windows, and the BUCS Super League, which keeps going from strength to strength.

Finally without the club-country clash, is it time to bring back the England Saxons? Think of the dozens of players chewed up and spat out of England training squads over the past seven years. Playing for the Saxons would be a far better indication of whether a player is ready to step up to Test level than holding a tackle bag for 80 minutes.

baldpaul101:
That article makes some decent points, but then contradicts itself.
10 team league, but then want more playing opportunities for players
Suggest that a 10 team league would help clubs when currently clubs are bemoaning the loss of fixtures against Wasps & Warriors.
Hold up France a model but ignores the fact that they have a 14 team league, play games during 6 Nations rest weekends & dont have the international rest periods agreed between PRL & RFU.

Its far too complicated an issue to be fixed with 3 changes & its also, like all the other nations issues, its a unique situation to English Rugby, just like Wales problems are unique to them.

Bloke in North Dorset:

--- Quote ---Everyone knows taking the league from 11 to 10 teams makes sense.
--- End quote ---
Do they? It is not axiomatic so where has that case been set out that shows this to be the case?


--- Quote ---On the contrary, there is a confidence among many clubs that marketing matches as prestige fixtures to both punters and broadcasters would become a lot easier, particularly without the clash with the internationals.
--- End quote ---

Policy based evidence making. Tell them enough times and they'll start believing their own hype.


--- Quote ---Plus top-end players would benefit from more rest periods.
--- End quote ---

Don't believe it. This means home grounds are only going to be used 9 times a year, they're going to have to jack up prices quite a lot fill the hole of losing 3 home games.

And then in the next section we are told youngsters aren't getting enough game time.

The internal inconsistencies in this report are part of the problem and it stems in no small part from the belief the rugby can be a high money generating game with fewer matches and no evidence presented.

It would be more honest to say something like we think there are at most 10 sugar daddies willing to fund rugby, or maybe 8 and a couple of teams self financing.

WonkyWasp:
Thankyou BiND.  I was reading that this morning and thinking ''Is this just me, (usually) but isn't this a load of codswollop?''  He keeps arguing against himself, ie 10 teams in England can't equate to more playing time for players but obviously less.  And the French having 14 teams have more players of  quality and experience from whom to choose.  The RFU don't realise that they are losing numbers of rugby fans;  rather, they seem to think that we will transfer our affections to support the remaining 10 ( 9? 8? .....?)  Premiership teams  but NO. It don't work that way.  Quelle dromage.

Neils:

--- Quote from: WonkyWasp on March 15, 2023, 01:22:27 PM ---Thankyou BiND.  I was reading that this morning and thinking ''Is this just me, (usually) but isn't this a load of codswollop?''  He keeps arguing against himself, ie 10 teams in England can't equate to more playing time for players but obviously less.  And the French having 14 teams have more players of  quality and experience from whom to choose.  The RFU don't realise that they are losing numbers of rugby fans;  rather, they seem to think that we will transfer our affections to support the remaining 10 ( 9? 8? .....?)  Premiership teams  but NO. It don't work that way.  Quelle dromage.

--- End quote ---

I think the comments section to the article should make the author think a little!

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page