The Northampton director of rugby, Phil Dowson, fears the sport is “sleepwalking” towards another club going bust and endorsed plans for the Premiership to become a franchised league on the basis it would be more appealing to investors.
Premiership and Rugby Football Union executives have drawn up plans for an “expansion” league, akin to a franchise model, that would allow for teams to be added to the current 10 top flight clubs should they meet certain criteria. The RFU chief executive, Bill Sweeney, revealed that there is the possibility of expanding for the start of next season.
Relegation would be officially done away with, however. No side has been demoted since Saracens had it forced upon them for salary cap breaches in 2020 and though there was the potential for a playoff between the side who finished bottom of the Premiership and top of the Championship this summer, only Doncaster met the necessary criteria and they are out of the second tier title race.
Stating the case for an expansion league, this week Sweeney said: “The old traditional one-up, one-down promotion and relegation system doesn’t currently work in England.” He added: “We need to get new investment into the game.”
Newcastle are bottom of the Premiership and may require a loan from the other top-flight clubs in order to ensure their place next season in the latest example of a club in jeopardy. In 2022, Worcester and Wasps went bust while London Irish and Championship side Jersey met the same fate a year later. Dowson believes removing relegation would encourage more investment into the game.
“My concern is more the financial stability of the clubs and the unions,” said Dowson, who played for Worcester and Newcastle, who have both played in the Championship in the last 10 years. “Every single financial report is on huge losses. Australia lost $36m, the RFU lost £35m, Gloucester lost X, Bath lost X, Saints lost X. [Former chief executive Mark Darbon] last year said we’d lost £1.7m. He said that’s good, we were forecast to lose £2.7m. Rugby is nuts. That’s what frightens me, I feel like we’re sleepwalking into more Jerseys, more London Irishs, more Worcesters – it frightens me.
“If you can get a model where people are a bit more confident in investing money because we can either run it as a sport or run it as a business and we’ve got to start thinking about the financial implications of relegation and it puts people off. You look at football, the last three clubs who got promoted got relegated, that’s a huge factor there.”
Asked if that outweighs the ideals behind promotion and relegation, Dowson added: “It would be great if you could get to that point. But in the short term we’re putting fingers in holes, trying to make sure ends meet and it worries me.”
Meanwhile, George Furbank’s hopes of being named in this summer’s British & Irish Lions squad have been dealt a blow with Dowson confirming the fullback will miss Northampton’s Champions Cup semi-final against Leinster in Dublin on Saturday.
Furbank missed the Six Nations with a broken arm before making his comeback in Northampton’s quarter-final against Castres this month. He impressed after coming on after just three minutes, but was seen in obvious pain, replaced before full-time and may not appear again this season.
Andy Farrell names his Lions squad next Thursday for the summer tour of Australia while England face July Tests against Argentina and the US. Dowson added: “George won’t play this weekend. He’s struggling to get over that arm break and getting back into contact is hard for him. It’s week by week really. He’s not a soft lad but it’s clearly very painful and we don’t want to make it any worse. I couldn’t tell you what’s going to happen [with the summer tours]. I’ve asked the physio about 485 times if he can play and the physio has said no every time. I’ll ask again next week.”