Premiership II plans announced

Or cricket only has 18 pro teams spread over 2 leagues.

Paul10 wrote: I'm not with you. Cricket has counties. A finite number. Rather like Irish rugby.

County based so you cannot have hundreds of teams

Paul10 wrote: I'm not with you. Cricket has counties. A finite number. Rather like Irish rugby.

Interesting that the Championship does not produce players… when Painter couldn’t get game time at Saints, he was destroying scrums for Blues, ends up at Exeter and then the wider 6 Nations squads. Without the shop window of performing at Blues he would probably still be a bit part player for Saints and not pushing for an England place.

Many of the kids around our club (Southwark) have no idea rugby exists. They have never watched a game of rugby and their parents would never of watched a game. However, they have most likely watch American football or basketball. The promotion and marketing or American sports is excellent in comparison to rugby which is stuck somewhere in the 90s. 

Camquin wrote: For a club to survive in the Championship cots at least £1m a year, to thrive a lot more. For a semi-pro club to raise that, without TV coverage or central marketing, is actually quite an achievement. There is no magic money tree, and no silver bullet. There is only hard graft, and marginal improvements.

Edited by Big Eddie - 18 Jan 2024 at 09:03

[QUOTE=rugbychris]

Caldy Rugby Club is just a section of Caldy Sports club limited who manage the bar and ground for three sections Rugby , Hockey and Cricket and the income from the bar goes to C.S.C.L not the rugby club. It has one full time member of staff. All the bar staff are part time and the grounds , all 16 acres are managed by volunteers cutting and marking 3 full size pitches, 12 Mini and Junior pitches, maintaining the car parks and banks. Despite this the Rugby Section has been able to rise through the leagues together with a 2nd XV who are unbeaten since April 2019. We registered over 500 mini and junior players this year including 50 girls, a section which is growing year on Year. 

Camquin wrote: We have plenty of clubs that work well as semi-professional clubs. One of the reasons we have seen a turnover of clubs in the championship, is the strength of National 1. The relegated side is not guaranteed to bounce back. For a club to survive in the Championship cots at least £1m a year, to thrive a lot more. For a semi-pro club to raise that, without TV coverage or central marketing, is actually quite an achievement. The idea that there are clubs out there that could raise that sort of money, but cannot succeed on the pitch, is simply laughable. Success needs money, and clubs with access to money usually earn success - unless they continually pay over the odds for journeymen players - and yes I am looking at you Rosslyn Park, the repeated under achievers. And perhaps it has been too easy to buy a side without building up the club to pay for it, and in this case I am looking across London at Eltham and a side playing on a school pitch. The fact their sponsor also backed the England 7s side with promises he proved unable to keep is also problematic.  It points out a major problem with sponsorship. No club wants to look the gift horse in the mouth.  We know sponsors are doing this for prestige, and not because it is the best use of their marketing budgets, so perhaps we do less due diligence than we might  - I seem to recall London Welsh having a sponsor who turned out not to be good for their money    And this is made more of a problem because we currently have no clubs that can survive as fully professional without support from a generous owner. That includes the Premiership, where the losses are significantly more than a Championship side's budget. If we want to move from where we are, to a situation where we have more financially secure clubs capable of employing more full time professional players, we will need to grow the base of the game.  If we find a way to get more games onto TV, then there is potential, not just for the direct TV money, but it might also attract some more in person attendance, which both make it a better product able to attract more sponsorship. But at the moment, we do not offer a product. We need to work hard to get the sport in front of people eyeballs, or in their ears. So we need to get TV and radio to mention not just the Premiership, but the clubs in at least the Championship and National Leagues. The NCA has done good work putting together a weekly highlights package on its website, but that does not really enlarge the viewing base. Some Local radio does sterling work covering the game, we have Radio Cornwall at Cambridge for the match last week, as well as having reports on Radio Cambridge. But many clubs do not even get that. If the RFU wants a sponsorable second level - sport is never investable - it needs to put its effort into promotion campaigns. It needs to work with the clubs, not against them. It will take time, we cannot expect to turn the game around in a single season. There is no magic money tree, and no silver bullet. There is only hard graft, and marginal improvements.