DIY SOS star Nick Knowles backs Cornish Pirates’ Premiership ambitions

TV presenter Nick Knowles can usually be found at a rugby ground on a Saturday when he isn’t filming his BBC show DIY SOS, but he has gone one step further than being a fan; he has invested in the Champ Rugby outfit Cornish Pirates.

Knowles, who played flanker at school, Skinners in Tunbridge Wells, then for the local club before spending two seasons in Australia at Kiama, New South Wales, says he always takes his boots abroad while filming, hoping to find a game.

When at home, he developed into a rugby equivalent of a football groundhopper, going around Bath, Bristol, Worcester, Gloucester, or even across the Severn Bridge into Cardiff in search of a game.

Knowles has now invested in the Pirates, who recently became the first club to receive investment from the USA when Pittsburgh-based private equity group Stonewood Capital Management pumped in a seven-figure sum.

“The new CEO went in there is an old friend of mine that I’d worked with on Jason Lennard’s Charity, Sally Pettipher, and she started talking to me about it. And in the end, he came down to I like pasties. I like Cornwall.

“I’ve been going there my whole life, so I’m sort of almost adopted Cornish. I’m not Cornish, but I’ve been literally going there since I was six months old, despite being a Londoner. And I was sort of keeping an eye on it.

“And then during the winter, they were up against it, anyway, struggling financially, and got some real problems, and then in the winter, the roof blew off their stand, and they realised there was all kinds of horrible stuff in the stand that made it unsafe.

“So I published a fundraiser for them. And then you were talking to them more and more, and what was a few games down there to show support, and when I got talking to them, I thought, Well, there’s a real opportunity here.

“We’ve been working on getting investment in, and there’s been some American investment which is, really, really positive. So, we’re like, let’s just see if we can lay out a plan, like a five-year plan, to get Cornish Pirates and Cornish rugby back where it should be,” he said.

Knowles remains tight-lipped about the club’s five-year plan, but applying for a franchise when the Prem adopts the model for the 2029-2030 campaign, when the league is expanded from 10 to 12 teams, is on the cards.

The potential catchment area and potential is huge, with only National League One Plymouth Albion currently playing between them and South-West of Exeter Chiefs, who are two hours away on the A30 and M5. “In 1991, Cornwall went up to Twickenham to play Yorkshire in the county championship. 40,000 Cornish turned up to watch the game, which they reckoned was 10% of the county’s population.

“You think about that, and important rugby is in Cornwall. And Cornwall has such an identity of its own, you know. It thinks of itself more of a nation than a county. So they’ve got a real sense of identity down there.

“And, of course, they’ve always produced great rugby players at an international level, the most recent examples being Luke Cowan-Dickie, or Jack Nowell. There’s a massive tradition of these boys coming out of fishing villages.

“And I think it’s very much like New Zealand. We’ve got a lot of farmers in New Zealand, and like fishermen, they are people who work with their hands, very physical jobs, and that lends itself automatically to rugby, I think.

“The Cornish have always had a proud tradition of rugby, and if you think about it, Pirates have always been there or thereabouts at the top of the league, either first or second. I mean, this year, it’s just gone. We missed the playoffs, but they’re usually there or thereabouts.

“And we know they talk about, you know, the premiership being sealed off and all the rest of it, but I think, if you think about it, if we could get Cornish Pirates, like, really up to where they should be, you’ve got a massive fan base there that would come,” he adds to RugbyPass.