The second tier of English club rugby is to be relaunched as “Champ Rugby” with a new promotion and relegation structure and promises of an easier pathway into the Premiership for ambitious clubs previously stymied by exacting demands on ground capacity.
Revealed by the RFU on Thursday, the 14-team league for next season will include the 12 current clubs, a re-formed Worcester, who went bust and dropped out of the Premiership 2022, and Richmond, champions of the third tier National League this season.
All teams will play each other in home and away fixtures over 26 rounds, leading to playoffs and a final.
The champions will then face the Premiership's bottom club in a two-legged playoff, with promotion subject to the Champ club meeting the minimum standards criteria that have caused so much disquiet in recent years. There will also be relegation and playoffs at the bottom end of the table.
Ealing Trailfinders and others have routinely been kept out of the top tier by strict rules that demand a phased ground capacity of 10 001, or evidence of plans to be able to introduce such a development, as well as other financial commitments.
The clubs have argued that it is unreasonable and unrealistic to expect them to spend huge amounts on plans, let alone development, to reach a capacity they might never need.
Simon Gillham, Tier 2 Board Chair, told a media briefing that the way things happened this season (with only one club, Doncaster, ruled suitable for promotion) was "not satisfactory".
"It strikes one as a closed shop and protectionism and those are things that we really don’t want to see in sport," he said.
"We have an oral commitment that we will be revising those minimum standards. There needs to be a runway and a three-year plan and then if you don’t meet that plan you have committed to after a year, then you are out.”
This new-found appreciation of a pathway to the top – with Exeter’s climb through the ranks to be crowned champions always held up as the ultimate example - remains at odds with the thoughts of many Premiership clubs and RFU CEO Bill Sweeney, who said last month that he thought the Premiership should be a closed shop, with new clubs joining only as part of a franchise model.
The issue of funding that might enable a promoted club to be competitive also remains far from clear. The RFU’s funding of Championship clubs has plummeted from 600 000 pounds ($797 280) per club to 160 000 in recent years.
"It is absolutely right that the current gap in funding makes it difficult for someone who goes up to stay up," Gillham said. There will be a "centralised resource dedicated to the championship", while discussions are ongoing with potential sponsors.
Conor O’Shea, the RFU's director of performance rugby, said there were "grown up conversations" taking place about funding but said he saw the relaunch as part of a potentially glorious period for English rugby with the Champ playing a hugely important part in the development of young players.
“Our focus is the step change we want to make in the Champ. It’s already a great competition, but we want all the standards across the board to grow," he said.
New rules will mean 18 players in a matchday squad must be English-qualified, with an allowance of six players per matchday squad dual-registered with a Premiership club.
The launch promotion highlighted how several of the new British and Irish Lions squad cut their teeth in the second tier, with Northampton’s breakthrough star Henry Pollock playing for Bedford last season.
"Henry is the first cab off the rank of three to four generational players," O'Shea said. "Our job is to create the structure for the players to fulfil their talent. This is going to be a very special time if we get it right."