Andy Goode: London Irish should be welcomed back to Champ but with one big caveat

London Irish’s potential return to the upper echelons of English rugby should be welcomed by everyone, but with one very important caveat.

They should be forced to repay every single one of their rugby creditors and the club reportedly owed £30 million back in 2023, with a sizeable covid loan not repaid on top of that too.

I understand that wasn’t the case with previous attempts to revive Wasps, when former Scotland international Kenny Logan was part of a steering committee looking at ways to return them to the top tier, and that just doesn’t sit right with me at all.

Even then, I fully appreciate there will be Champ clubs that are annoyed by London Irish being parachuted back into the second tier but that’s something we’re going to have to accept as a sport.

You can’t keep everyone happy and if someone is willing to tick all the boxes and has the finances and ambition to return the Exiles to the top table, it’s an option that simply can’t be ignored.

Prem Rugby have openly stated they want to expand to 12 teams by 2029/30 and there isn’t exactly a long queue of clubs that could reasonably help them achieve that goal.

They’re even said to be targeting an expansion to up to 20 teams by 2040, which looks like a pipe dream at the moment but who knows what the future holds.

I think adopting a healthy scepticism is a good approach at this stage given what we’ve seen in the past and the fact that Irish were bought out of administration by an Eddie Jordan-led consortium last year but haven’t yet managed to get back up and running. 

However, Jordan’s son Kyle has clearly been exploring the best options for the club following his father’s death and there is now said to be “a serious amount of money” behind the project so it’s right for fans and everybody with the game’s best interests at heart to be more hopeful.

“He doesn’t want to be seen as a sugar daddy,” added chief executive Jamie Balls when speaking about new owner Steve Daniels.

“What he wants to see is, if you want X amount of millions here, you show me how that’s going to become sustainable.”

That should be music to everyone’s ears and the fact Daniels is described as a “rugby man through and through”, having played at Colchester RFC and invested in the grassroots game, is also encouraging.

Let’s face it, he’s going to need a serious amount of money though because no PREM club is turning a profit, there is an awful lot of debt floating around, and it’ll take a lot of short term pain before the potential of any long term gain.

It’s not clear how things would work in terms of the academy setup and boundaries but that is vital and you only have to look at the best run clubs, Northampton being the prime example, to see just how important it can be to finances as well as on-field success.

The likes of Henry Arundell, Will Joseph, Ollie Hassell-Collins, Ben Loader and more, who are currently starring in the PREM, came through the Irish academy and getting that pathway back needs to be a priority.

However, the enormous elephant in the room is where they’ll play because it’s impossible to even conceive of making a profit without owning your own ground and that will obviously be a medium to long term project.

It’s great to hear talk of them looking into building in Sunbury and there were rumours of them sharing AFC Wimbledon’s Plough Lane in the short term but that is clearly among the first hurdles they need to overcome.

The appetite is there and I was even approached by a lady of a certain age on the train the other day telling me how the club were on their way back, as well as admonishing me for retiring without playing a competitive match for them, but they have to prove this latest attempt is viable and attract new, younger supporters too.

Gamechanger Investments, headed up by Daniels, is targeting a place in the Champ next season but that feels a bit soon given the amount of work that needs to be done behind the scenes to put everything in place as well as recruiting the right people in every department, from marketing to ground staff, before you even get to the playing department.

Worcester are obviously a couple of years ahead of London Irish in terms of this process and they’ve had to jump through some similar hoops but it’s great to see them at the top of the Champ table at the moment and also heartening to hear that Irish are prepared to wait if necessary.

“If next season were an opportunity and they would allow us to do so, we would like to go then. If it’s not, then we’ll wait another year,” Balls added.

I know there will be murmurings of discontent from some quarters if they’re welcomed into the Champ with open arms in the near future but I just think you have to be quite narrow-minded and spiteful to not want to offer them a way back from the second tier if they fulfill certain criteria and can boost the sport as a whole in this country.

Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion but I, for one, would love to see them back in the Champ and then the PREM as soon as possible. I just wouldn’t even be starting the conversation until they’ve repaid all their rugby creditors so here’s hoping.