CHAMPIONSHIP OVERVIEW
Let’s start with a question: when is a league not a league? Give up? When it mutates into a knockout competition.
It’s a bit like a game of Pass the Parcel – you think you’ve won something only to discover there are several more layers and anyone can still win it.
It could only happen in Rugby.
Can you imagine the reaction if the FA proposed that, at the conclusion of home and away league fixtures, its second tier would be divided into two groups who would play for promotion or survival? Not only that, the top two thirds would be split into two further leagues, then there would be a semi-final and then a final and all of these outcomes would be decided on the basis of home and away matches. There’d be uproar.
So it was hardly surprising that, when this was proposed three years ago next week, there was considerable consternation.
But despite the necessity for five League One clubs to be relegated to National Division Two, six League One clubs supported it. These were: Coventry, Doncaster, Exeter, London Welsh, Nottingham, and Plymouth Albion.
One critic was Geoff Irvine of Bedford, Chairman of First Division Rugby Limited (FDR) who said that it would be “financial suicide”.
What the RFU proposed was that the leading Division One clubs (those finishing 2nd to 11th in National League One) would become “founder members” if they agreed to turn professional. They would be joined by the relegated
Premiership Rugby Limited (PRL) club which would give them a regular league season of 22 fixtures.
TWO PROFESSIONAL LEAGUES ARE BETTER THAN ONE.
The RFU’s thinking was that two professional leagues, rather than one, would give the competitive structure in England a broader base and allow for sustainable movement between the two leagues. The alternative was to ring-fence the top tier so that, in effect, Division One would become the top level of what the RFU rather patronizingly refers to as “community rugby”.
In the light of recent in-fighting, one could create a credible case for suggesting that the Championship initiative was the last time that the RFU came up with anything remotely constructive.
The sweetener was that the Championship would receive £2.3m per annum from the RFU, £1m from the PRL and a decent slice of the RFU’s TV deal with Sky.
At the time, there was huge financial disparity in funding between the PRL and the FDR. In 1998, not long after the dawn of the professional era, the ratio of direct RFU funding between the leagues was 2:1 (£500k to £250k each club respectively). This rose to 5:1 in 2008 (£13m split between the PRL, while the FDR received a modest £168k club). Include TV revenues and other sponsorship deals, and this became nearer a massive 10:1 disparity.
However, despite Mr Irvine’s reservations, it went ahead in 2009 and is currently in its third season.
IS IT A SUCCESS?
Whilst many consider that the new format enhances the competition, it is not to everyone’s liking.
The main complaint, which this season’s changes should go some way to mitigating, is that results in the regular season count for nothing come the day of reckoning.
If you finish 8th, you have still got a chance of winning the league and gaining promotion to the Premiership. However, you will have to win your mini league – which includes the club who topped the regular season league – to progress to the knockout stages.
Of more concern to many was the situation at the bottom. Moseley prop Nathan Williams summed it up in the Birmingham Sunday Mercury in February 2010:
“If you finish eighth you can get promoted and if you finish ninth you can get relegated, that doesn’t make much sense. It just goes away from the traditional principle of win the league and you go up and finish bottom and you go down.
“I am all for play-offs to win a championship, like the top four play off in the Premiership. But I don’t like to think of a relegation place being decided that way. You could win nearly half your fixtures and still go down – that’s a very harsh reality.”
At that stage of the first Championship season, despite having won 10 of their matches - while neighbours Birmingham had won none - Moseley had to beat top placed Bristol to avoid finding themselves in the same boat as Birmingham: the dog-fight to avoid relegation.
The other concern was that it allowed little time for clubs to recruit strengthened squads for the coming season.
“I don’t think it’s a very good system because you are talking another six weeks before you can even begin planning for the following season,” said Williams.
“The best of the crop is going to be signed up by then and you are going to have the boys who are left over.”
However, when Exeter was promoted to the Premiership after that first season, they dispelled that worry by finishing mid-table at the first attempt with very little external enhancement of their squad.
SO WHERE ARE WE NOW?
The current format for this three-staged competition is as follows:
In the promotion phase, the top two clubs at the end of the regular season will start the play-off on three points. The third and fourth placed clubs will start on two points. The fifth and sixth placed clubs will start on one. The remaining two clubs will start on none.
As before, the top eight clubs will be divided into two pools: 1st, 4th, 5th and 8th comprise Play-off Group A, while 2nd 3rd, 6th and 7th enter Group B. The two highest placed clubs go through to a two-legged semi-final and the winners to a home and away final.
At the bottom, the four clubs fighting for survival will carry over 1 point for each win in the regular season.
CONSTRAINTS
But there still are a couple of other levels of paper to unwrap from this parcel before we get to the prize.
A salary cap limits free-spending benefactors from unleveling the playing field. Perhaps more significantly, only clubs that meet the PRL’s minimum requirements – in terms of facilities – will be allowed to join the top tier.
This wasn’t an issue in the first season when finalists Bristol somehow managed to persuade the authorities that their set-up was adequate for top tier rugby; many would dispute this. And fellow finalists Exeter had no problem, as they had just spend £14m on their new ground, Sandy Park, leaving them around £2m out of pocket from the sale of the County Ground.
Of the current crop of contenders for promotion in 2012, it is likely that only Leeds, Bristol and Nottingham would currently meet the PRL’s criteria. There was some holding of breath last season when the Cornish Pirates – whose facilities most certainly would not – challenged Worcester for promotion.
AIM OF THIS BLOG…
While I’m sure that none of this is hot news to the well-informed rugby supporter, it serves as a background to the origins and current state of play in the Championship.
Over the coming weeks, this blog will aim to provide news and analysis of events and developments in this fiercely competitive and exciting league.
Every other week, there will be a spotlight on one of the clubs who currently make up this division. I hope to bring you an interesting in-sight and to provide information not readily available elsewhere.
With a bit of luck, I will be able to cover some of the matches and include my reports within the following week’s blog.
CHAMPIONSHIP SUMMARY
With a third of the first phase league matches completed, Bristol has their nose in front with 33 points, five ahead of the Cornish Pirates.
However, although Leeds – surprisingly languishing in 8th place at present - have only won four of their eight matches, it would be wrong to discount anyone in the top eight slots as eventual winners, for this is the most open Championship since its inception.
For details of forthcoming fixtures, please follow this link http://clubs.rfu.com/Fixtures/MatchByDivision.aspx?DivID=130433319 and if you want to check on what’s happened already, click here: http://clubs.rfu.com/Fixtures/MatchByDivision.aspx?DivID=130433319.
Thanks for reading this and please feel free to leave a comment.
More next week – enjoy your rugby!
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