Exiles set for Exile?

[GB72]

I would love to see a fully supported championship but I really do not know how you get there. There is mention of a TV deal but I honestly do not think that you could give the TV rights to the championship away at the moment. Advetiser are not going to pay for such niche viewing. Then you have attendances. They are perhaps about 10% of what they need to be to be of a benefit to the premirship. To my mind you can disregard the ground size but should require an average attendance of over 5000 for the season to gain promotion. Than you move on to the facilities which are not even close to being near the required standard.

There would be years of investment, marketing and development needed to bring the product and experience to anywhere close to being what is expected of a top sporting day out.

Tnen you have the elephant in the room for promotion and relegation, the promoted team gets hammered and relegated and the relegated team wins most matches by a cricket score and gets promoted seems to be the pattern. The championship is good at the moment because there is no prem leval club hammering all opposition.

There is so much to like about the championship but it is so far away from being a decent, marketable sporting product. Sadly I think the gap with the premiership will close but that wil be because the prem clubs will have to slash budgets and lose top players.

Agreed, and you'd think that the standard of the Championship will improve, given smaller Premiership squads and the sad aspect of Worcester, Wasps and now London Irish academy/fringe/squad players ending up in that league. The flip side of course is developing local players, more of whom either can't get in because of the above clubs going under and those players being picked up by clubs, as well as the loan of Premiership Academy players. The whole structure is wrong. Was there a crowd of over 5,000 in the Championship last season ? Unless the Jersey v Ealing games attracted that many, but I would doubt it.

Sadly, the biggest issue will always be football. That eats up the big sponsorhips deals, the TV money and all of the press and social media attention. I posted before about womens' football, crowds seem to only be a few thousand at club (the interest there is, like rugby, at international level) but they have prime time TV deals, massive media attention and sponsorship because it is football. This is shown on prime time BBC, Sky, the lot.

The interesting thing is that we are probably more comparable to county cricket, the difference is that the average County crickter earns as little as £25000.00. and their wage cap is about £3million.

[Hot_Charlie]

I would love to see a fully supported championship but I really do not know how you get there. There is mention of a TV deal but I honestly do not think that you could give the TV rights to the championship away at the moment. Advetiser are not going to pay for such niche viewing. Then you have attendances. They are perhaps about 10% of what they need to be to be of a benefit to the premirship. To my mind you can disregard the ground size but should require an average attendance of over 5000 for the season to gain promotion. Than you move on to the facilities which are not even close to being near the required standard.

There would be years of investment, marketing and development needed to bring the product and experience to anywhere close to being what is expected of a top sporting day out.

Tnen you have the elephant in the room for promotion and relegation, the promoted team gets hammered and relegated and the relegated team wins most matches by a cricket score and gets promoted seems to be the pattern. The championship is good at the moment because there is no prem leval club hammering all opposition.

There is so much to like about the championship but it is so far away from being a decent, marketable sporting product. Sadly I think the gap with the premiership will close but that wil be because the prem clubs will have to slash budgets and lose top players.

Its an elephant in the room that no one is willing to address. Ultimately there aren't enough bums on seats or TV viewers engaging with the professional game unless that game is a Tier 1 international at Twickenham.

That's the reality. It's a minority sport trying to pay rockstar wages.

[GB72]

I would love to see a fully supported championship but I really do not know how you get there. There is mention of a TV deal but I honestly do not think that you could give the TV rights to the championship away at the moment. Advetiser are not going to pay for such niche viewing. Then you have attendances. They are perhaps about 10% of what they need to be to be of a benefit to the premirship. To my mind you can disregard the ground size but should require an average attendance of over 5000 for the season to gain promotion. Than you move on to the facilities which are not even close to being near the required standard.

There would be years of investment, marketing and development needed to bring the product and experience to anywhere close to being what is expected of a top sporting day out.

Tnen you have the elephant in the room for promotion and relegation, the promoted team gets hammered and relegated and the relegated team wins most matches by a cricket score and gets promoted seems to be the pattern. The championship is good at the moment because there is no prem leval club hammering all opposition.

There is so much to like about the championship but it is so far away from being a decent, marketable sporting product. Sadly I think the gap with the premiership will close but that wil be because the prem clubs will have to slash budgets and lose top players.

Its an elephant in the room that no one is willing to address. Ultimately there aren't enough bums on seats or TV viewers engaging with the professional game unless that game is a Tier 1 international at Twickenham.

That's the reality. It's a minority sport trying to pay rockstar wages.

Agreed, trouble is who woudl want to take the risks associated with pro rugby now for wages of maybe £50k a year which, asside from a few star names, is what I suspect is actually a more reastically affordable level for most clubs to maintain a decent sized squad. The harsh reality may be central contracts, few or no foreign players and a s2quad made up of promising devlopement players looking to earn a central contract (like cricket)

[ourla]

That's the reality. It's a minority sport trying to pay rockstar wages.

I was going to say "that is a bit defeatist/ott." but thinking more it's just a bit simplistic. Players wages are whatever the league can withstand. It's really up to the people running the League to get the finances right. Logically they should be looking to maximise the revenue of the league and then giving one of the major components are requisite share. It's just going through a reset at the moment.

To me there isn't much doubt that there is a viable pro English rugby union league to be had. If you look at the clubs like Tigers, Saints, Gloucester, Quins they have a good brand (sorry for the term), own their own ground, etc. There is history and interest. It just needs some management, marketing, inspiration.

They need to think about what is good about rugby, what is appealing, who it would appeal to. And get good owners, good people running it.

[ay2oh]

Since there is now no A league games how many players do you really need per squad. Allowing for injuries and assuming the useless gin swilling people at the RFU realise that you don’t need to play premiership games during international week-ends I think probably 30-35 is enough. If the average salary is £100k with your 3 or 4 star players earning a maximum of £350 k this should keep you well within the cap.

[Cagey Tiger]

Since there is now no A league games how many players do you really need per squad. Allowing for injuries and assuming the useless gin swilling people at the RFU realise that you don’t need to play premiership games during international week-ends I think probably 30-35 is enough. If the average salary is £100k with your 3 or 4 star players earning a maximum of £350 k this should keep you well within the cap.

One small correction, altbough it doesn't affect the point you are making about squad size. My strong memory is that it was the clubs who wanted to keep on playing when international matches were being played. They felt that, for example, if there were no club matches for 8 weeks while the 6 Nations was on, people would lose interest and drift away.

[Tigerbeat]

Since there is now no A league games how many players do you really need per squad. Allowing for injuries and assuming the useless gin swilling people at the RFU realise that you don’t need to play premiership games during international week-ends I think probably 30-35 is enough. If the average salary is £100k with your 3 or 4 star players earning a maximum of £350 k this should keep you well within the cap.

One small correction, altbough it doesn't affect the point you are making about squad size. My strong memory is that it was the clubs who wanted to keep on playing when international matches were being played. They felt that, for example, if there were no club matches for 8 weeks while the 6 Nations was on, people would lose interest and drift away.

It was also to keep players match fit and bring some finances to the clubs.

[LE18]

Since there is now no A league games how many players do you really need per squad. Allowing for injuries and assuming the useless gin swilling people at the RFU realise that you don’t need to play premiership games during international week-ends I think probably 30-35 is enough. If the average salary is £100k with your 3 or 4 star players earning a maximum of £350 k this should keep you well within the cap.

So where are all the surplus players going to go? I doubt many of the 2nd tier clubs can afford a living wage for any of them, how little can a player afford to live on, I suspect many will just have to give up.
Very very sad.

[ay2oh]

I realise it’s not the RFU’s fault that clubs have been badly managed but had they carried out due diligence each season it may not have come to this certainly regarding Worcester and Irish although Wasps is another matter.

[Ian Cant]

I think the clubs must work harder in the community to get more families interested.
From my experience of coaching school children they really enjoy the players coming to help with coaching and in the past this then meant families, pestered by their children attended some matches.
For Tigers The A League was a time when families turned up at sensible kick off times paying something like a fiver or the school(s) were given some free tickets which resulted in more interest.
Tigers now have a huge opportunity to sadly cash in on Leicester City’s relegation!
During the 6 Nations I believe many Tigers’ fans would turn up to a cup competition if it was sensibly organised which the daft set up recently has had the opposite effect.
As much as possible the matches need to be fairly contested to encourage fans to turn up and the younger players to improve their skills.
I’m not at all sure a 10 team league will be sustainable so sure the last clubs standing should be meeting now to come up with some ideas to keep each other financially secure.
The clubs left in the Premiership can all get more fans in their grounds if they make
sure the game is a quality product!

[wormus]

I think the clubs must work harder in the community to get more families interested.
From my experience of coaching school children they really enjoy the players coming to help with coaching and in the past this then meant families, pestered by their children attended some matches.
For Tigers The A League was a time when families turned up at sensible kick off times paying something like a fiver or the school(s) were given some free tickets which resulted in more interest.
Tigers now have a huge opportunity to sadly cash in on Leicester City’s relegation!
During the 6 Nations I believe many Tigers’ fans would turn up to a cup competition if it was sensibly organised which the daft set up recently has had the opposite effect.
As much as possible the matches need to be fairly contested to encourage fans to turn up and the younger players to improve their skills.
I’m not at all sure a 10 team league will be sustainable so sure the last clubs standing should be meeting now to come up with some ideas to keep each other financially secure.
The clubs left in the Premiership can all get more fans in their grounds if they make
sure the game is a quality product!

It really is such a shame that the "A" League is no more as it gave young players experience together with returning injured players plus a few needing game time to play against similar opposition ( in most cases Sale were always different!)
The Monday evenings were always fun and if I recall we once filled the Crumbie, the A&L east stand and overflowed into the Next stand. The family atmosphere was great and I really miss these opportunities I had then to get out of work early and grab a meal and a beer at Tigers. I hope they reintroduce something along those lines again.

[Hot_Charlie]

That's the reality. It's a minority sport trying to pay rockstar wages.

I was going to say "that is a bit defeatist/ott." but thinking more it's just a bit simplistic.

Ok, wages they can't afford, like deciding two "excluded players" was a good idea.

Ultimately, the point is wages are too high for the profile of the sport.

[Mayocaz]

Squad sizes are a major problem for clubs. I’d like to know how many paid professionals most clubs have. Nine home games in the league isn’t going to pay for all that. I read somewhere that the wage cap is similar to what the top sides in league one in the football pay. If that’s the case then at least the football team have 23 home league games to help bring some money in. With the TV money now under threat I can’t see how the game can continue for much longer. Maybe having some part time squad players is something the clubs might need to look into because paying chunks to lads who are basically reserve players isn’t sustainable.

[GB72]

That's the reality. It's a minority sport trying to pay rockstar wages.

I was going to say "that is a bit defeatist/ott." but thinking more it's just a bit simplistic.

Ok, wages they can't afford, like deciding two "excluded players" was a good idea.

Ultimately, the point is wages are too high for the profile of the sport.

This I agree with and I for one do not think that it is being too defeatest. I really do think that without some dramatic changes, the Premiership could be in the last few years of existance. We lose one more club and you have to think that it is all over in the current format. You may then be left with 3-4 clubs with stabler finances and with enough fan appeal to be attractive to other leagues.

The problem is that the salary issue is a vicious circle that we are in at the moment. You develop a player in the academy and get great value, the player is then picked for England, you then see a massive increase in wage demands and the player is available less and so you need solid back up as well. You do not meet the wage demands, you lose the player to another club. You let them go and develop a replacement, they excel, they get picked for England and the circle continues.

Thing is, with crowds as they are and revenues as they exist, most rugby players should be on about £30k a year, similar to County Cricket. Who is going to put in the work and take the medical risks for that. Plus, if you pay what is realistic, players go abroad, the product on the pitch gets worse and then fans disappear. How would Tigers fans react if we got rid of our top half a dozen earners to be financially prudent and gave up on challenginf for honours.

I really cannot see a way that it works without the dreaded central contracts and a big reduction in the use of higher paid overseas players.

[ourla]

The reason I say it is too simplistic to say "wages are too high" is because they are impacted by so many different things - and it's ever changing.

Look at it another way. If every player in the league took a 20%/30%/50% pay cut today would everything would be good again. What would the effect be. Would every club be profitable. Would the league be profitable.