Quinssa AGM Report 7: Evs on Relegation

By Prof
June 20 2006

In the seventh report from the Quinssa AGM Mark Evans gives his personal views on the contentious issue of ring fencing and relegation.

Q: If we end up with ring fencing what will be the drive for teams to improve themselves? 

A: There are only a certain number of teams in any sport who can play at the top level. In association football Macclesfield are in the same pyramid of leagues the top clubs but they don’t have pretensions of playing in the Champions League, Watford are unlikely to be thinking of Europe, each team finds it’s own level. 

There is no shame in being like Bedford, they are a strong ND1 club, they have good support, they have a 6,000 ground, they make a slight profit, they take 5,000 fans to big cup games but they don’t want to risk big money by getting promoted.

Sedgley Park and Bees are far too far away, they put all of  their resources into the playing side. 

The question is how do you square the circle. You allow clubs to aspire without getting into massive debt or getting a money man in who will buy success which is what happened to me at Sarries when Nigel Wray came in.

You can either hope for a money man to come in or you can live within your means and do the best you can, if you win the league you can turn down promotion and put the parachute payment into the club. 

Leicester will have a 22,000 stadium and a £16,000,000 turnover – a team like Sedgley Park will never be able to catch up. You need to turn over £7,000,000 a year to be able to cope in the Guinness Premiership and if you can’t afford it then don’t bother otherwise you could end up with another West Hartlepool (which was always one of my favourite clubs to go to).

 

Q: If you have ring fencing how do you avoid meaningless games? 

A: When Wales play England or Scotland play Ireland when there isn’t a chance of winning the Triple Crown or the Six Nations are they meaningless games?

 

Q: But it’s not the same because of the numbers of people involved and the passion

A: I don’t think people feel less passionate about their club than about their country. It is different to 20 years ago when country came first but there has been a sea change recently. In Britain Rugby Union is the first team sport to go full time professional along with Rugby League for 100 years (both in 1995). Rugby Union has had leagues since 1987, the game has been going since 1871. It’s only really association football that has relegation.

Gary Gold (the ex-London Irish coach) who was from South Africa where they don’t believe in relegation said that you don’t need relegation to stop you from finishing bottom of a league. It’s embarrassing to end up bottom, jobs are lost and careers are ruined.

Some people in Wales (but not me) think that the league structure has caused more of the problems in the Welsh game than anything else. 

One answer may be to offer an expansion franchise every 4 or 5 years when the game increases like they have done in America.

I think we are wasting lots of money in the game because of relegation every year. I want rugby to get bigger, I want it to be a big sport.

I’ve been saying this for 10 years and I will continue to say it for 10 years.