Premiership Debate

14 teams and ringfenced. Unless they expand end of season playoffs (with issues arising then on numbers of games for players) that will be an awful lot of dead rubbers in a season.

Raider999 wrote: donnyladinsheffield wrote: 14 teams and ringfenced. Unless they expand end of season playoffs (with issues arising then on numbers of games for players) that will be an awful lot of dead rubbers in a season. I have said it before, why change anything after a season like this one where almost every game on the last day of the season had something riding on it. The threat of relegation keeps clubs on their toes - I suspect it is because there was a chance the mighty Leicester were almost relegated that this topic became a hot potato. It's not broke so don't try to fix it!

To be fair, Leicester have been continuously vocal in their support for promotion and relegation.

So, TRP had a story saying that Ealing (in particular its main backer, Mike Gooley) has stated that he would support a 13 team premiership with a relegation playoff - on the proviso that there would be more funding for the championship, in particular cannibalizing the "parachute" payment.

Richard -some rugby benefits.  Ring fencing would remove threat of relegation. Consequently D of R's/Head Coaches would be more likely to give young England qualified players an opportunity to play rather than bring in ever increasing numbers of overseas players. This would increase the number of experienced players who could potentially play for the national team. How many of our excellent u20 World Cup squad each season get a Premiership start the following year compared to those of NZ,Aus and SA? More English coaches, managers, strength and conditioning coaches and medics would be given the opportunity to learn their trade in the highest league and develop for the potential benefit of the national team-we might even develop a succession plan for the England Head Coach. The huge amounts of RFU money pumped into the Premiership would go to develop more English players- not simply act as a pension pot for past it overseas journeymen. Finally the first job of a coach would not be to avoid relegation. This would potentially allow more risk averse styles of play being adopted and thus could see the top teams indulge less in either a box kick fest or simply hold possession until the opposition concede a penalty and then kick to the corner to score via a catch and drive. Finally there wul dbe less incentive to spend so much money on wages-thus allowing the millions currently spent to flow further down the game to hopefully ensure the places from which many of today's best players started still exist in 20 years time

Ryan Walkinshaw, former owner of Gloucester admitted the development of academy players was "Low down the priority reasons to Ringfence the Premiership"

mundiz wrote: If (when) they ring-fence the Premiership, we should ring-fence the Championship players.  To sign a contract to play in the championship or below a player must be contractually obliged not to play for a Premiership club unless a £1 million levy is paid to the club that they transferred from. Simples

The last similar programme was for clubs below Level 5 to receive a "reward" from national/ Championship or Prem clubs for players who played 1st XV rugby prior to their 21st birthday. This was on the proviso the said player had been through the original clubs junior teams, Premier academy player were excluded. But in my experience no Nat level club paid up despite requests to them, their CB or the RFU (only 2 cases to be fair). 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/50955072

Here we go again