Braced for major league shake-up

Apr 16 2008 by Our Correspondent, Liverpool Daily Post

DRASTIC change to the face of rugby is on the way if proposals contained in minutes acquired from recent RFU Council and RFU Governance Committee meetings are to be implemented.

These changes will effect all clubs below the Guinness Premiership and the National League clubs in particular.

I have never seen the point of National Two clubs having to travel the length and breadth of the country, at considerable cost, to fulfil a national fixture list and have advocated that National Two be divided into two conferences north and south to ease this burden.

Now Chairman of the Management Board Martyn Thomas has come out with a far more radical alternative of amalgamating National Two and Three into three regional leagues of either 14 or 16 clubs each.

That would mean in the north west Waterloo, Caldy, West Park, Manchester, Sedgley Park, Fylde, Kendal and Preston Grasshoppers would all play each other.

Gone would be Waterloo’s treks to Cornwall and Kent to be replaced by fixtures which in most cases would be less than an hour away.

On the face it this seems a sensible approach but until agreement is reached with National One, to reduce from 16 to 12 all full-time clubs who will join with the Premiership clubs to form the professional end of the game, the restructuring is yet to be decided.

Terry Burwell, who as RFU Tournaments and Competitions director, is not prepared to move on this issue nor on the plight of clubs lower down the structure who are desperate for an increase in league fixtures.

Yet despite protestations from clubs likely to be cast adrift such as Sedgley Park, who have mounted a furious campaign to keep the status quo, the odds are on the National One reforms going through.

However with the RFU there are always secondary agendas.

There is no doubt that after next season funding to National League clubs will be cut, hence the plan to regionalise the leagues to reduce travelling (for Waterloo about £30,000 next season).

They also want to abolish the National Clubs Association which looks after the interests of the semi-professional National Two and Three clubs and bring them into the orbit of Community Rugby which up to now comprises all clubs below level four (National Three).

The NCA leadership is very much opposed to this as they believe they have a major role to play at that level but they also see this as the RFU trying to turn the clock back to the days of amateur rugby, something which is unlikely although with reduced funding wages will inevitably have to be cut.

The NCA will probably survive as part of a trade off and there is a chance that they will be kept out of the orbit of Community Rugby but regionalisation from National Two down will happen.