A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER of players will face unemployment next season after the Rugby Football Union (RFU) stunned second-tier Championship clubs by informing them they were slashing their budgets by 50%.
The news has been met with outrage by Championship clubs, which vary hugely in budget and size from the likes of Newcastle Falcons – set to make an immediate return to the elite – to Hartpury College.
The 12 clubs were told of the swingeing cuts at a meeting on Tuesday with RFU chief executive Bill Sweeney and director of performance Conor O’Shea.
They told the clubs the annual funding would be reduced from £530,000 to £280,000 a year from July — roughly £3million a year in total.
There is a £6million spending gap between Gallagher Premiership and Greene King IPA Championship clubs.
Saracens are due to drop down next season and while several stars will depart the club, the slash in budget will limit their rivals’ chances of competing with them for promotion.
“It’s the RFU saying it doesn’t want the Championship,” Nottingham chairman Alistair Bow told The Guardian.
“The Premiership has had a lot of influence over all the decisions regarding the Championship, certainly for the 10 years I’ve been involved.
“I do strongly believe the actions the RFU has taken have handed PRL everything on a plate and without having to pay a penny for it.
“The RFU has handed English professional rugby, everything, to the hands of PRL.”
As you would expect, reaction coming thick and fast from dismayed Championship clubs. Nottingham "extremely disappointed" with the funding cut as well as being "astounded at the underhand and deplorable way that we feel this has been communicated."
— Chris Jones BBC (@chjones9) February 12, 2020
The RFU, though, claim the cuts are being implemented due to the Championship failing to fulfil five strategic targets in return for a significant rise in funding after the successful hosting of the 2015 Rugby World Cup.
Sweeney denied this shut off promotion from the second tier to the top flight.
“The RFU is not using this as a means to seal (the Premiership) off,” Sweeney told The Telegraph.
“We don’t think this is an amount of money which defines whether or not you can go for that.
“But clearly there will be speculation that this is a direction (ring-fencing) in terms of the way the game is going.”
Sweeney, though, said the clubs had failed in their strategic targets despite receiving the £6million a year in funding since the 2015 World Cup.
A failure to make the Championship financially secure — the clubs lose £260,000 a year on average — and a failure to become a production line for both the top tier and the England national team were among the reasons cited for the cut.
Sweeney conceded the slashing of the funding would oblige the clubs to revert to a “semi-pro model”.
Average attendance figures do not make pretty reading for the second tier.
Newcastle lead the way with an average of 4,527 a match but even the well-funded Ealing Trailfinders, based in west London, struggle for spectators with just an average of 927.
