A two-conference Gallagher Premiership - how would it work?
Among the many points up for discussion during Nigel Melville's first media briefing last week as RFU interim CEO was the prospect of how to solve relegation.
None of the current Gallagher Premiership clubs (shockingly) want to go down this season but one certainly will do so by the time May rolls around, after Melville confirmed nothing would change regarding the league's structure this season.
His long-term alternative plan, however, naturally piqued interest.
The crux: the Premiership has too many professional players for too small a number of teams.
So why not follow the model of the Pro14 and turn the Premiership into a conference format, with no relegation.
Melville has taken over as interim CEO from Steve Brown CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES
“If you expand, you have to go into a conference structure. You would go to 14 or 16 teams. Two eights would give you a true geographic spread. Two eights would play home and away, then go into quarters, then go into semis. It’s like when they brought play-offs in the Premierships.
“If you look at the NFL, they don’t have a cup competition and an A League and all those sorts of things. They focus on their core business. We’ve got nearly 1,200 professional players in the country.
“Do we need 1,200 professional players? New Zealand’s got five franchises of 30-plus ITM Cup guys so that’s two or 300 professional players.
“We’ve got 1,200 professional players and maybe the reason is that we’ve got so many competitions going on with elite players. That’s money going out of the game. It’s not going into infrastructure. Maybe we get down to 1,000 or 800 players.”
Which teams would be involved?
Sixteen over 14 seems a bit choice, in order to avoid having this discussion again down the line. Let us suppose that four teams are added to the existing Premiership dozen: London Irish (the 13th shareholding club), Ealing Trailfinders, Jersey Reds and Cornish Pirates.
Ealing and Jersey currently sit in second and third place in the Championship behind Irish, while Pirates have long held Premiership ambitions and began work on a new stadium back in August which has the potential to be expanded to the Premiership minimum capacity of 10,000.
Of the remaining contenders, Nottingham have the option to return to play at Meadow Lane, shared with Notts County, should they move up to the Premiership, but find themselves overshadowed locally by Leicester Tigers and also Wasps and avoided liquidation as recently as 2014.
Bedford have openly stated as recently as 2017 that they have no intention to play in the Premiership, with their Goldington Road stadium set at a capacity of 6,000, and are positioned halfway between Northampton and Saracens.
London Irish are seeking a swift return to the Premiership CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES
How would the conference structure work?
The structure is relatively straightforward: two groups of eight, playing seven matches home and away against the teams in their conference and a further seven matches against the teams from the opposite conference, making a total of 21 matches. The top four in each Conference would then advance to the quarter-finals.
The top three teams in each Conference automatically qualify for the Champions Cup. The remaining sides would then be added to an expanded Challenge Cup.
What about derby matches?
These would be built into the Conference structure to ensure teams face their nearest rivals home and away each season. So Bath and Gloucester, Bath and Bristol, Leicester and Northampton, Harlequins and London Irish, Harlequins and Saracens, would all get two shots at each other.
So a Conference structure could look like...
Glad you asked.
Potential Premiership Conferences
Conference A Conference B
Bath Ealing Trailfinders
Bristol Harlequins
Cornish Pirates Leicester Tigers
Exeter Chiefs London Irish
Gloucester Northampton Saints
Jersey Reds Sale Sharks
Newcastle Saracens
Worcester Wasps
Sympathy here for Newcastle given they would have to make long trips to Cornish Pirates and Jersey Reds. As with the Pro14, the make-up of each Conference could be reviewed at the end of each season to then mix the teams up the following year.
What about the Championship?
That would come down to the RFU. With no promotion on the line - few teams have really challenged for that in recent years, and those that have such as London Welsh have paid a heavy price - any private investment would likely disappear, with each club's top players moving to a Premiership side.
The Premiership Rugby Cup, formerly the Anglo-Welsh Cup, would also disappear entirely.
Would this help or hurt player welfare?
Melville's suggestion of fewer players, but more teams, immediately seems illogical given the assumption that each team would carry a smaller squad and therefore stretch their players more.
The counter-argument is that no relegation means more opportunity to experiment with personnel, although that works only to an extent with Champions Cup qualification and a spot in the play-offs on the line.
Regulations surrounding the availability of England players throughout the season are tightening, so do not expect to see Maro Itoje and Owen Farrell every week, for example, with the next Itoje and Farrell getting their chance to impress more often.
Would teams play more attacking rugby with no threat of relegation?
In theory, yes. No relegation should translate to more risks being taken, less conservative game-plans and more tries being scored.
But those who are not regular viewers of Super Rugby seem conveniently unaware of the amount of dross that gets served up on a weekly basis.
Super Rugby quickly realised they had made a colossal error in expanding to 18 teams because the quality of their product nosedived.
Even having since axed three more sides - with the Cheetahs and Kings joining the Pro14 and the Force given the boot - Super Rugby has still not recovered. Nobody wants to miss the Crusaders taking on the Hurricanes, but who is rushing home for kick-off between the Reds against the Sunwolves?
The core issue was that Super Rugby now lacked enough top quality players to make every match interesting - or, you know, 'Super' - as was the case back in the days of Super 12.
Super Rugby strugglers the Bulls and Sunwolves in Singapore CREDIT: REUTERS
Money
If the Premiership wants the expansion to be a success, then the four new sides coming up from the Championship have to be given more money than Saracens, Exeter etc. in order to be able to compete, as is the case when teams are promoted to the Top 14 in France.
A balanced competition with no relegation holds some appeal, but not a constant mismatch. That extra funding could also lead to top England internationals moving elsewhere.
Good news for English coaches?
Definitely. Veteran coaches or high-profile overseas recruits have largely been preferred over the years in a bit to keep teams afloat in the top flight, rather than taking risks on unproven players.
Taking relegation away eradicates that pressure and allows teams to experiment a little bit more with their coaching recruitment, perhaps turning to more recently retired players.
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