Premiership Cup No More, Trust In Short Supply?

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2025:03:31:22:12:33 by Kimbo.

Released this afternoon (Tuesday), the Whole Game Union, WGU, have made this corruscating statement:

' Every single one of the proposals in Sir Bill Beaumont’s letter to clubs on February 28th and the supporting RFU document called “Our Commitment to the Community Game” was covered by the statement that members of the Whole Game Union made in submitting our demand for an SGM on January 9th.

The RFU’s document could have been copied from the Whole Game Union’s “A Better Future For Rugby At All Levels” document sent to all RFU-registered clubs in England on Feb 17th.
The RFU’s “commitment to the community game” was absent without leave before this recent flurry of activity. They had failed to notice the growing dissatisfaction with the Executive, Board and Council that was obvious from press reports for months before January 9th.
Our ‘Better Future’ document summarised months of work and consultation by the WGU which identified from hundreds of clubs the root causes of their dissatisfaction with Twickenham: poor governance; unsustainable finances; bloated administrative structure and neglect of the community game in favour of the elite.

The only elements overlooked by the RFU in their own version of this were the frustration caused by the payment of huge bonuses to their executives and the identification of the RFU Board’s failure to hold those executives to account. The RFU’s actions until last week had focused on defending itself from criticism over its LTIP bonus scheme. The resignation of the Chairman on December 20th was described as a personal decision linked to the “distraction” caused by the LTIP story. The announcement of the Freshfields review was limited to consideration of that bonus scheme.

If you want to know what the RFU really thought, maybe the President of the RFU gave it away last December. Then, in what he thought was a private internal message, he belittled the reporting on growing discontent throughout our game as media spin and clickbait. This showed little “commitment to the community game”. It was only after the SGM letter was reluctantly accepted – having initially been rejected on trivial grounds – that the RFU announced its roadshow. And it was only when the powers that be finally left Twickenham that they seem to have found out just how deep-seated is the resentment at the unfairness meted out to clubs below the elite. What they discovered may have shocked them into action, but it was their attitudes were before they were forced to confront the truth by which they should still be judged now. Because even until the end of last week, the Board and Executive were exhibiting contempt for the Whole Game Union, without whose actions they would still be rooted in TW2, blissfully unaware of the dire state of the game for which they are responsible. Like anyone who tries to express the views of the underprivileged, the WGU is the subject of constant abuse and contempt from Twickenham. Yet only the WGU has accurately represented the collective views of hundreds of clubs and members of the RFU. It is a broad-based group with an advisory board consisting of more than 20 people from clubs at every tier, several Council members and expert former officials of the RFU. It is continually in touch with clubs from all over the country and its support is growing.

The RFU would be well advised to start to take the WGU seriously, to recognise that it is the only way of hearing the collective voice of the English game and to respect its right to a central place in the critical discussions about the future of English rugby.'

Think the Howitzers are now ready to fire!

RugbyPass understands that PRL were rumoured to be pushing to only include the top six Championship clubs from next season, which was understandably ill received by a league that had already seen two of its member clubs axed.
Newly-promoted Chinnor and bottom-of-the-table Cambridge were excluded from this season’s competition to make it a 20-team event and were subsequently left to part fill the gaps left in their fixture calendars by playing each other, home and away, in the ironically titled, ‘Not the Premiership Cup’.

Not sure why RugbyPass thinks it was a rumour. I thought it had been announced officially before the start of this season that only the top 6 clubs would be included next year.

BB

Ten Champ clubs were happy enough to throw Cambridge and Chinnor under the bus this season in order to play in the competition.

Quote:

Wazeroonie
Ten Champ clubs were happy enough to throw Cambridge and Chinnor under the bus this season in order to play in the competition.

Very good point. Lack of unity within Championship clubs is not helping the situation

I see that there is to be a Prem(iership) Cup this coming season although unfortunately it will not include any Champ(ionship) clubs which I think is a pity for Cov. We will not be able to replicate the Northampton and Leicester gates from our additional two league games. Looks like the Prem clubs have been split into two divisions of five clubs and they play each other home and away over 10 weekends with two semi's and and final so filling 12 weeks of the season in total with every club guaranteed at least four home games. It was unrealistic that the Prem clubs could afford to lose the income generated from these games and so the competition continues. It's a shame the better Champ clubs have not been included and I think it is loss for them not to participate plus also the Prem clubs will be playing some of the same teams four times in a season albeit academy players will predominantly play in the Cup competition.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2025:07:29:19:27:09 by Cov1981.

I think the issue was that the Championship clubs would not split, as I believe the Premiership wanted the top 6 to join the Cup, so a further reduction. I do agree though that the Championship clubs should have gone ahead with it, greater exposure and a few of us took a few scalps, whilst enjoying larger gates. Just shot ourselves in the foot.

Although the playoff also generate large gates so that should help.

TB - looking at the fixture lists and some of the comments on the prem forums I think everyone's shot themselves in the foot. Prem clubs are just playing each other over and over again and the season looks incredibly dull - tigers vs saints 4 times in one season for example.

Personally im glad the champ clubs showed some solidarity especially after cambrige and chinnor were left hung out to dry last year.

Id love to see the champ look to bring back something like the British and Irish cup we used to have. Maybe playing the welsh/Scottish semi-pro/amateur teams or something like that. Game needs variety and not just playing the same clubs over and over

Dawson ,the champ did exactly the same having a cup comp where we played each other multiple times with weakened teams a plenty.

Yep and it did it really appeal to anyone? If you're just playing tbe same teams you did in the league there's no variety to it and it becomes very stale imo

Quote:

dawson9
Yep and it did it really appeal to anyone? If you're just playing tbe same teams you did in the league there's no variety to it and it becomes very stale imo

It was awful. The Prem Cup was a different animal entirely, though. I admit to doubting it before it started, but I now feel it's a huge loss not having it - even in a truncated form.

I didn’t have a major issue that Cambridge and Chinnor did not qualify for it last year. The issue was that they did not know what the criteria would be.

If we look at football, the top 4 (5) go to the Champions League and then others go to other competitions, so having some reward for league performance would also a new bit of excitement and dimension.

Also when Cambridge are losing 80 points at home to Blues, are they really capable of taking on Premiership clubs? Blues and others had close games or wong. Blues came close to beating Bath twice (but lost), beating Bristol and being tonked by them at their place was a good showing for the Championship.