Champ Rugby rebrand brings more jeopardy but still no certainty over promotion to Premiership
Rugby union’s second tier will be rebranded as Champ Rugby from next season and will prioritise aspiration and jeopardy by increasing promotion spots from National One, and crucially, giving its champions a greater chance of gaining a place in the Premiership.
For the past two seasons, Ealing Trailfinders have won the division but have not passed Premiership Rugby’s strict minimum standards criteria for entry into the top flight.
The only team to pass that audit in this season and last is Doncaster Knights, Yorkshire’s highest team up the pyramid, who have fallen short on the field.
But on Thursday, the Tier 2 Board announced a rebrand and a restructure to its competition format as part of a unified approach it hopes will create a smoother runway to the top division. The reborn Worcester Warriors and National One champions Richmond will join the existing 12 teams in a 14-team league that will bring back play-offs for the top six clubs, in which the top two teams get a bye and those placed third to sixth meet in an eliminator.
The winner of those play-offs will then face the bottom team in the Premiership in a play-off for the last spot in the top flight, provided they have met the minimum standards. At the bottom, the 14th team will be relegated, while 12th will host 13th in a relegation play-off, with the loser facing the winner of the second v third play-off in National One for the final spot in the following season’s Champ Rugby. That news will be music to the ears of Rotherham Titans, who finished third this year and are showing ambitious signs again.
Doncaster have won seven games in a row in the league but have left their charge too late. However, club president Steve Lloyd has said recently he wants to go for it next season.
How much funding will be made available?
To help with that they and their rival clubs need greater help from centralised funding, which has been reduced in recent years from £600,000 per annum to £160,000.
Tier 2 Board chair Simon Gillham said: “Obviously we want that number to go up but it depends on several parameters which are sponsorship, gates, discussions with the RFU.
“There still will be minimum standards. We’ve had discussions and an oral commitment to revisit those minimum operating standards because what happened this year was not satisfactory.”
Champ Rugby has a funding pot of £4.3m, with some of that central funding sent directly to the clubs, some of it being used for the commercial strategy to grow the league and some for league wide insurance.
Conor O’Shea, the RFU’s executive director of performance, pictured, said: “Local revenue is your biggest thing. By making the Champ more competitive through the season with fewer dead rubbers we are really driving that local growth. That fundamentally is the game-changer - people going to the matches.
“The central number is going up but we have to drive it as well. For the first time we own all commercial and broadcast contracts.”
O’Shea also confirmed that the league will put a cap on the number of dual-registered players at six for next season, reducing concerns about integrity of the competition.
When Doncaster faced London Scottish in the autumn, Scottish had a huge swathe of Harlequins players parachuted into their squad at the last minute.
‘We need to work together’: says Coventry chairman
Nick Johnson, the chairman of Coventry who sits on the board and is a long outspoken critic of the Premiership audit, said: “We have already seen a step change in how the RFU and Premiership look at us because we have got our act together.
“Being one of those clubs that failed the charade of the audit, it was a great learning outcome but the game needs us all to work together.
“Now there’s more people in the room from different parties there’s more of a sensible discussion going on about reality, and them recognising that they have to make these runways.
“You can’t ask clubs £10m on a stand that could be empty for four years.
“We’ve got to invest in the clubs that are aspirational. We’ve found through the expressions of interest in tier two that there are five or six clubs that can make a difference to the English eco-system but they need help to get there, and the game needs to help them. That’s why jeopardy is important.”