Champ Rugby players left reeling by owner's shock decision

RugbyPass understands that one-time Gallagher PREM hopefuls Doncaster Knights will not be operating as a wholly full-time rugby programme next season.

Owner Steve Lloyd, who has bankrolled the south Yorkshire club for years, along with fellow businesman Tony de Mulder, has had enough of throwing millions down the drain.

Despite bringing in players of the pedigree of ex-England wing Semesa Rokoduguni and other former PREM stars, such as full-back Telusa Veainu and prop Logovi’i Mulipola, Doncaster are nowhere near where they should be.

With the Champ Rugby season resuming this weekend, the Knights find themselves 11th in the table and highly unlikely to make the end-of-season play-offs.

The 28-27 home defeat to part-timers Caldy at the start of the year was apparently too much for Lloyd to take. He called an impromptu players’ meeting to say that the rugby budget, which is believed to be circa £2m and second only to runaway Ealing Trailfinders, would be significantly scaled back to a ‘hybrid model.’

What that hybrid model looks like remains to be seen, but RugbyPass understand that only the players already under contract for next season will retain full-time status. Plus-one deals will not be activiated, we are told, and the remainder of the squad will be part-time.

Fearing for their futures, players have already been ringing around other clubs to try and line up new deals for the 2026/27 season.

The Knights plan to bolster their squad with loanees from PREM clubs, university players and players from the Yorkshire Academy, which now looks set to be based at the club’s Castle Park ground.