Link doesn't work, at least not for me.

Richard's link has a trailing space that is causing it to break.

http://inews.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/premiership-rugby-promotion-relegation-ring-fencing-championship-565755" rel="nofollow - https://inews.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/premiership-rugby-promotion-relegation-ring-fencing-championship-565755

This is so daft that I suspect that this is a clever negotiating position by which the Champ clubs will be able to say "We have provided you an offer to end promotion/relegation." That way they have set their stake in the ground.

Standard "Yes, Prime Minister" tactic. Bury the bad news in the middle of a lot of dull and boring drivel. China did it in the 70s in order to get Hong Kong off the decolonisation list.

Key stumbling block highlighted in bold below...

Have you read any of the reports about this issue? The RFU didn't commission this proposal: the Championship did and unanimously agreed it before presenting it to the RFU  and Premiership. If you're going to get on your high horse about this then at least make yourself aware of what horse you're getting on. As for funding the new academy structure, yes the RFU and Premiership are supposed to do that. Ring-fencing? You're quite right a moratorium on promotion is part of it, but sadly for you this is a proposal from the Championship.

Whether it is any good is an entirely different matter. 

The thing I do not like about this report is that it has been developed by "the 11 Championship clubs"

There is no such thing.

There are "the 11 clubs who happen to be in the championship this season"

In five years time it is likely 4 of them will no longer be i the Championship.

And of those 4 I suspect 2 will not be in National 1 either and will have dropped further down the pyramid.

As I do not have a crystal ball I had to use a mirror.

So yes I am looking at Yorkshire, Moseley, Plymouth and Rotherham.

Five years ago the championship still features Bristol and Worcester.

In fact of the eleven it featured: Scottish, Nottingham, Jersey, Pirates, Doncaster and Bedford.

Promotion from National League One to the second division would also be suspended for at least two seasons.

That said, the new NCA Chair has made it clear that he sees ground standards as an important element of promoting rugby at Levels 3/4 so why not at Level 2?

Richard - I had missed that line.

I think they have looked at Rotherham and realised that without RFU money, there fate lies somewhere between that and manchester or even Leeds (who I have no confidence will raise a team).

And actually you can add Otley Newbury, Sedgley Park and Esher.

Clubs get addicted to the heroin of RFU funding.

If they want to play in a League without relegation Surrey 4 is over there ->.

I don't know why the RFU don't just say 'lets have a geographical distributed Championship of X teams meeting Y criteria' starting in 2021/22 with clubs bidding to be part. This would be ringfenced for Z years when the bidding reopens. 

In return of meeting the criteria, the clubs would share funding a minimum of £A each - to be know upfront at the time of bidding.

Then these clubs would meet the non performance criteria for future admission to the Premiership.

It would give every club an opportunity and not just those currently keeping the seats warm. 

It is a point I frequently make elsewhere with supporters of current Premiership clubs. The reply is always "But that was back then and lots of things have changed since" - in reality what they mean is they are currently in the driving seat rather than in the passenger seat. 

But when they are in the passenger seat there is never the demand to ring fence. 

Since the Leagues started ony Leicester, Bath, Gloucester and Wasps have not played outside the top flight. 

I read a statistic that if Brentford are promoted into the Premier League nearly 50% of Football clubs  will have played in that competition since its formation. That is what open promotion and relegation can produce - an opportunity for the best teams of their day to play at the highest level. 

Unfortunately in Rugby we believe that the best teams in 2020 will still be the best teams in 2025. 

That's a powerful stat. 

Why should every club not be given the chance to aspire to the top league? Ring fencing would kill rugby IMO. The top flight would become a sterile, tedious competition where there would be a lot of  meaningless games. 

as would level 2 if that's being ringfenced at both ends too - but then given the academy draft also being proposed, doesn't that effectively make level 2 the A League rather than "a league" anyway...?

Ealing suffers from its location and would be another club in a crowded London market, especially now London Irish are returning to the capital. 

Doncaster, as you say, would tick the box to have a team in Yorkshire.

Cornish Pirates would also expand the geographical remit and if the stadium ever gets built would have a good case. 

I’d prefer to see Pirates get the chance but so much depends on how quickly S4C gets built.

Donny also have a good claim.

Why not take Saracens shares and split them between 2 of that 3. Then Saracens could slip quietly down the Leagues while playing in a park in North London.

I don't think a long term tie up with Brentford is really feasible for Ealing, as Brentford isn't part of Ealing Borough - loathe to throw away 150 years of tradition. Trailfinders are the only professional team in the borough of nearly 400k people, so there is scope to have a reasonable number of fans. I will absolutely say that Irish being so near may siphon some off, but on the other hand, when we last played Irish, we had just shy of 4000 fans at the game, the highest ever attendance at TFSC.
 

and RugbyPass has got the full details.

I'm sorry, but this is actually worse than even I thought

 - the Championship to go to 16 teams over 2 years but initially to be sealed off at top and bottom

- 60 academy players to be playing in the Championship at any one time 

- each Championship side to have a squad of 35 of which 12 must be academy players (whose salaries will be paid centrally and not come under a salary cap *minimum* of £600k per season

- the £600k minimum must be spent per team per year on the other 23 players *of which* only 10 players per squad may be over the age of 24.

Meanwhile...

 - the Prem sides would undertake to draft a minimum of 48 players from the Championship every year and undertake to sign no young English player who isn't playing in the Championship

so essentially, let's pull up the draw bridge. Let's gut the clubs below the Championship for every player of any talent who isn't already playing for a championship club, and let's overtly be a nursery league.

It's like the end of the Bridge on the River Kwai - madness....

It was about 50:50, though hard to tell in pictures as both teams wear green as their primary colours. If Ealing get 4000 in regularly and half are from the visiting team, I'm not that bothered. More people going to watch Rugby is a good thing to me.

The ring-fencing aspect, I could almost stomach.

But this?

If this is adopted, they have killed rugby union for me.

I may just have purchased my last ever season ticket, and that probably for a truncated, largely meaningless 'season'.

I feel slightly cheated, and angry and sad in equal measure.

Well not for the first time I'm glad we're not at level 2 at the moment - but I'm really not one of the ones who was being accused earlier in the thread of coming onto the Championship board to crow at the Championship and how bad it is - my (probably slightly broken record) feeling about level 3 being preferable was in large part because I've been convinced for some time that someone was going to try and pull a stunt like this. I just never thought it would be the level 2 clubs in fairness...

But if Covid means money's tight and this could be stomached by the boards as saving enough face I suspect it could be passed at least for consideration.

Clearly RFU Comps will take it all on-board, meanwhile........

Level 3 will remain 16 Teams (old Nat 1)

Level 4 will be 4 x as close to RFU Divisional (Regions) Leagues with 14 Teams in Each (old Nat 2N & 2S - teams from old Level 5 will be "uplifted" to fill in the gaps with a cascade effect from bottom up to re-balance the lower leagues)

Level 5 will be 12 Team Leagues unless regional variations means more/less teams (old Regional Premier)

Level 6 will be 12 Team Leagues

Level 7 down will be 12 Team Leagues or in some Regions 10 Team Leagues or less 

Talk of lower League National Cups comps with  differing structures.

Point 1

2nd XVs of Clubs from Level 3-5 will be allowed to participate in the RFU Leagues with a ceiling of not being able to play higher than Level 7 which will be reviewed after 1st year and which then may rise to Level 6.

Point 2

Don't think this includes any Clubs in the North West outside of the RFU Leagues (ie, Lancashire Lge and North West Lge)

Pretty sure the Clubs in the North rejected Point 1 when the RFU did their "listening surveys" also told that any further planned "discussions" will now NOT take place as planned.

Prove me wrong those in the know........... or wait 10 days!

That's how they got around the rules. London Welsh Amateur were a separate club legally and just adopted the London Welsh name after the liquidation of the original club. Likewise LIARFC and the Scots have done that too. 

it smacks of doing the very minimum so as not to upset those in power, no need to change the existing divisions of CBs.

However it probably will not actually solve any of the problems.

   

I won’t claim to be in the know any more than anyone else involved with the NCA but PiffPaff is not entirely right.

Level 3 will be 14 teams; Level 3 will be 3 Leagues of 14 (my suggestion was an M1 League, an M5 League and an M62 League.

2nd and 3rd XVs will be allowed to join the main Leagues with a ceiling of 3 Leagues below their 1st XV - so Richmond play at Level 2, their Vikings at Level 5 and their Saxons at Level 8.

Currently only the SouthWest Division allow 2nd XVs in the main Leagues and then only up to Level 9. 

This is controversial but seen as the best way to get meaningful rugby below 1st XVs.

Please if anyone has any sense (don't hold your breath with the RFU) let us start from the top otherwise will will have so much chaos in the structure for the next 5 years and that on top of Covid could Kill a lot of clubs.   

RFU have widened the brief of the committee looking at the league structure. Sweeney and his support have spoken to lots of clubs up and down the pyramid and recognise you can’t look at the league structure in isolation to other issues.

Especially as we do not know if all the clubs will survive this season, or lack of one.

The crucial thing missing from your “leak” is how many leagues there will be at each level. RFU very keen to reduce travel and were promising more closer to home games. 

There was no 'getting around the rules'.

When LW went to the Premiership, that team were the lone entity. They are the ones that disappeared.

The 'original club' was always the other teams.

Just to expand on this, the club (comprising the Amateurs, Occies, women, minis & juniors etc) wasn't liquidated. The professional entity - London Welsh Rugby Football Club Limited - was.  Where you draw the line between the entities is blurred - of course the 1st XV was part of the club, but it was a separate limited company with its own (limited) assets and (extensive) liabilities.  At that point the Amateurs became the defacto 1st XV by virtue of being the most senior team at the club. But good luck unpicking the history of those 20 years between the formation of the first limited company (I can think of at least three) and the liquidation of the last one, the transfer of assets to the CASC, and the legal and RFU definition of what a rugby club is.

Level 3-6 gone out just now to CBs and Club Secs.... I might be reading it wrong but Chester are in the same League as Redruth???? of course just a proposal......

https://www.englandrugby.com/dxdam/3c/3c8f721a-48bc-4351-ae64-a2a55cd4413c/Adult%20Male%20Future%20Competitions%20Plan.pdf?utm_source=140820CGU&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=140820CGU&utm_content=Community&spMailingID=10240303&spUserID=MjY5ODA2NzI4OTI2S0&spJobID=1573497626&spReportId=MTU3MzQ5NzYyNgS2" rel="nofollow - https://www.englandrugby.com/dxdam/3c/3c8f721a-48bc-4351-ae64-a2a55cd4413c/Adult%20Male%20Future%20Competitions%20Plan.pdf?utm_source=140820CGU&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=140820CGU&utm_content=Community&spMailingID=10240303&spUserID=MjY5ODA2NzI4OTI2S0&spJobID=1573497626&spReportId=MTU3MzQ5NzYyNgS2

Saying  that, I'm assuming that the Council will approve the structure that's been set out of course.

There hasn't been any Christmas Holiday league matches at those levels for years.

Still confused, by 2021/22 am reading Championship will be two conferences, 14+8 fixtures. So no difference to the 22 matches currently played. But an open draw cup?

R16, Quarters, Semis and Final.

But love or hate the current cup delivers 3 extra home matches. 

Perhaps they should try, Blues go from around 2,500 - 2,750 to 5,000 to 5,500, a good income generator.

I think it's designed that way to give players time with their families. Our club, as with many others hold annual charity games on Boxing Day. 

Bedford i suspect attract players from Ath, Queens etc to watch a game. 

Harlequins game at Twickenham attracts players from a lot of the commuter belt, bumped into Luton players at Big Game, out for post Christmas drinks. With marketing maybe a club like Cambridge could attract a bigger crowd. But below National 1 how many clubs are the only club in a district, or the secondary club?