IanD wrote:wixfjord wrote:Such clickbait there from Guardian and Balls. There isn't a hope that Doncaster or Ealing will beat both London Irish and Carnegie.
Anyway, hasn't this situation happened before with a few clubs?
It has happened but the important thing IMO is that both clubs asked not to be vetted for promotion. In the past clubs were held back after failing the criteria for Premiership grounds etc.
From the press release below Doncaster don't want to bankrupt themselves.
https://www.drfc.co.uk/news/article/clu ... ia-results
The press release is interesting too as it states
“English professional rugby union is currently in a state of flux and there is much to be debated about the future of both the Championship and the Premiership, evidenced by the scrapping of the recent proposals made by Nigel Melville and Dean Ryan.
“If and when the future of professional rugby union in England becomes clear, then the ambition of Doncaster Rugby Club remains as fervent as ever but we will not cripple ourselves chasing something that is not feasible at this time.
Hardly all singing from the same hymn sheet.
I agree IanD, this may have happened before, and yes they are the 2 side least likely to progress, but its a very different thing to say before a play-off ball is kicked that we are not interested.
Whats happening here is a start of a new civil war in English club rugby, 2 of the teams in the Greene King IPA championship are Aviva Premiership stake holders, one of them IS London iRISH, Bristol who drop down to the championship are and will remain a AP stakeholder with voting rights. The Championship sides (10 of the 12 in the league) are saying we are not playing by your rules anymore, we are not playing promotion-relegation anymore at the risk of there club. The background to this is that Championship sides play a development role/ feeder role to AP clubs, they get 500k a year for this. When the big new BT money came in it was not shared downward with championship clubs. Also its clear that promotion is only viable for the 2 AP clubs in the championship and that the AP is becoming a closed shop where in the future there will be no promotion from the championship.
The big question is, how do the AP fit 14 stakeholder clubs with voting rights into the season, or simply put how can they make the AP a 14 team competition. We can already see the moves to compress the international season. Again the AP clubs will be on a collision course with RFU over the cutting off of the Championship clubs, and over the season calendar. The lions already have had 2 weeks taken off there next tour. Civil war is coming.
Regarding welsh regions joining the AP, in my opinion it will not ever happen, also its not the WRU who were ever interested in this it was regional owners/ sugar daddies, that boat has sailed with the WRU taking back control of international players (dual contracts), bringing the regions to heel and the now official take over of Newport Dragons (100%), and now the move to take over Cardiff Blues.