All was not entirely lost, but too much flotsam and jetsam circled helplessly in the stormy air for comfort. The English league had just lost three stakeholders in Premiership Rugby to administration in the 2022-23 season – London Irish, Wasps and Worcester Warriors.
They left a trail of financial debris in their collective wake, not least the £30m in unrecovered loans from the taxpayer during the Covid-19 pandemic. But all three clubs are now well enough to apply for re-entry to the second-tier Championship [or ‘Champ Rugby’ as it will be called henceforth] when it expands from 12 to 14 clubs next season.
All the rugby creditors will need to be paid off in full before that happens, but the spectre of government loan debt will still be following all three clubs ominously, like an albatross across open water. A report by the Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport select committee suggested elite rugby in England was “in disarray”, while referring variously to “inert leadership” from the RFU and PRL, a “disastrous and ill-thought-through relocation to Coventry” by Wasps, and “unscrupulous owners [who] mismanaged club finances while attempting to strip the club of its assets” at Worcester.

In an interview with Sky Sports, the London Irish administrator Lee Manning claimed:
“There is little prospect of profitability in the medium term and therefore considerable risk of other clubs going to the wall.
“I think it is [just a matter of time] – unless the game’s financial model can be radically changed.
“It only takes one other club to fail, perhaps two, and where’s the viability of the league? Where’s the attraction of the league?”
The need for some form of external regulation was highlighted by Gloucester owner Martin St. Quinton in an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live at the start of the year.
“At the moment it’s the clubs who decide what the salary cap should be and the clubs have proved, year after year, [to be] completely incapable of setting it sensibly,” he said.

“It should be set independently from the PRB [Professional Rugby Board] with some input from the DCMS [Department for Culture, Media and Sport]. What is the right amount of money that we can afford to pay our club players?
“If our central distributions went up because our media rights went up and our sponsorships went up, then the salary cap could go up.
“We are all living beyond our means which is why the annual losses of all 10 clubs is over £30m which is madness. The whole club game, the model is flawed.”
Financial mismanagement, taxpayer bail-outs, unsustainable self-referencing systems? It all sounds like something out of the 2008 banking crisis more than a product of ‘the gentleman’s game’.
The Premiership has been left contemplating its own navel in recent months, especially after proposed merger talks with the URC to form a British and Irish league melted back into a featureless ocean of possibilities. There was an abiding impression other leagues around the world did not know what to make of the Premiership, maybe because it did not know quite know what to make of itself.
When data science academic Dimitri Perrin produced the following fascinating article comparing leagues north and south of the equator a couple of months ago, he included the URC and the Top 14 but chose to omit the Premiership from his assessment. Ironically, it is the Prem which approximates Perrin’s favourite Super Rugby most closely in terms of content. Here are some selected stats after the latest round of play in all four leagues.
The financial model may be flawed but the answer to Manning’s double question ‘where’s the viability of the league? Where’s the attraction of the league?’ is right there, out on the field. If there is one league which approximates the aerobic demands and entertainment value of Super Rugby Pacific 2025 most nearly, it is the Premiership. Both competitions share the same values and plant their flags on the same landmarks: ball-in-play time above 36 minutes, eight tries scored, and fewer than 20 penalties awarded per game.
The similarities are too close to ignore, but they are likely to be overlooked because of English rugby’s long-standing reputation as a one-paced, set-piece based trudge. That may have been true in the past, but it is not true now. Britons used to travel by horse-and-carriage, but now they have shiny new motors on long-lease deals. Times change. They no longer drive inferior products.
Off the field, the Premiership has been trying to follow the model across the Channel by forming closer links with the Championship. Three of its stakeholders will be playing in that tournament in 2025-26, and the Prem has looked to draw closer by committing more players via loan schemes.
Several Premiership clubs have ‘paired’ with Championship sides to farm out their younger squad players to the second tier: in the Midlands, there is a partnership between Northampton and Bedford Blues, in the West Country it is Exeter Chiefs and Cornish Pirates and Gloucester with Hartpury. Most recently, high-flying Bath Rugby opted to partner with one those three phoenixes rising from the ashes of administration, the Worcester Warriors.
Imagine young Bath front-rowers such as Archie Griffin, Vilikesa Sela and Kepu Tuipulotu fast-tracking through ‘the Champ’ rather than awaiting their rare first XV chances at the Rec. The plan moving forward is for second tier clubs to be able to recruit unlimited dual-registered players from Premiership sides, with the sole restriction a cap of six loanees in any one 23-man matchday squad.
Northampton’s progress to a Champions Cup final, a contest they could so easily have won with a full complement of players, and Bath’s victory over Lyon in the Challenge Cup only underlined how efficient the Premiership is becoming at the preparation of players for the levels of the game above domestic club competition.
Ironically, it was dyed-in-the-wool ex-Wasp Lawrence Dallaglio who foresaw a potential ‘golden era’ for one of his greatest rivals in the early noughties in his role as pundit for Premier Sports:
“I hate constantly making parallels with my own playing career but when Wasps embarked on our golden period of success, it all started with that Challenge Cup final [a win over Bath in 2002].
“It was a fixture against Bath in the final that kicked us off. We won that and then went on to win our first Premiership final against Gloucester as well.
“Bath have targeted the Premiership and been the front-runners all season, they have been outstanding in terms of their consistency, but this is a golden opportunity for them to get another trophy in the cabinet.”
The emphatic win over Les Loups was a West Country version of what the Springboks have been doing over the past few seasons. Bath have scored 330 fourth quarter points while conceding only 120 before the final round of the Premiership, at an average score of 20-7. Head of rugby Johann van Graan began unloading his 6-2 bench in the last half hour in Cardiff, and his charges cruised home 17-0 in that decisive period of the game.
The introduction of forwards with the power of prop Thomas du Toit and number eight Alfie Barbeary, and the contact nous of young Guy Pepper was entirely too much for the Lyonnais. Contact situations became increasingly unmanageable for the Frenchmen in that last half hour. Du Toit and Barbeary are two of the top short-range carrying specialists in the English game.
With Barbeary the inside option, Du Toit outside him and Beno Obano on the delayed arc off nine in between, it is very tough for the defence to account for all that power delivered at different angles. In the event, Ben Spencer picks Obano and Du Toit obliterates his opponent on the outside edge of the cleanout to drive him over.
Between them, Pepper, Du Toit and Barbeary have amassed 25 breakdown turnovers in the Prem so far, and they added another to the total in the 68th minute.
Finally, there was the scrum. It seems positively unjust Bath can lead off with a likely Lions Test tight-head in Will Stuart, then follow up with the best two-sided prop on planet rugby –Du Toit – in the final 30 minutes. Stuart delivers the punishing jabs and the Springbok lands the big right hand. Bath sit second in their domestic league with a balance of +10 penalties won at scrum time, and ‘Ingo’s Bingo’ was on target again in the final, racking up four penalties to nil in the final 30 minutes.
There is still a lot of work to be done on the Premiership’s financial model to make it viable and debt-free in future. There are no guarantees a fourth club might not follow the same bleak path into administration as London Irish, Wasps and Worcester. Premiership Rugby must come to its senses about the equation between total revenue and player salaries.
At least some sensible first steps are being taken, with all three clubs likely to dip a revived toe in the water in ‘Champ Rugby’, and the cavalry of considerable player-loan support from squads on the tier above riding to the rescue. The domestic product on the field is in a constant state of evolution and it provided excellent preparation for the Six Nations. The Premiership does not suffer in comparison with the best rugby played south of the equator. Not by any means. The days of ‘kick and clap’ are but a distant memory.
Yes I mentioned this in one of your other articles recently I think, they have bought the IP in well and made the adjustments at grounds to change the game. They question is, has it been for the better? Or are old fans turning off?
Certainly there has been a lot published, like every other league, about growth after COVID, the question really, which they hide the answer to, is where they have been at before. I think it will work for them, and these currently vocal owners are just over negative, or lacking judgement.
Aspects like promotion and relegation are interesting, though it doesn’t sound like they have got it quite right, it might give the incentive for the Champ sides to change they perspective on going pro. As I’ve said about rugby in the SH, their has to be a plan and a foundation to allow it to work. Is the Super Rugby model what’s needed to combat France? How will the Premiership reduce and focus all the talent into those half a dozen elite teams? How if and when rugby booms again can they move back to two tier model of clubs rather than franchises?
I really like the idea England produce Franchises or mega clubs, some sort of representative and meaningful county system (or whatever they call it there) to take on those in the rest of Britain. It’s just gotta be done right and time right, to coincide with Europe and Africa. SK or Wayneo brought up some great information about how the area is a target for growth.
Strangely enough, despite the interesting facts it was one small thing that jumped off the page; “Champ Rugby”. I had the same visceral reaction that I had when I saw the HSBC Sevens circuit was renamed HSBC SVNS. Some firms are paid for these nonsensical marketing irrelevancies. It even seems petty to me but something grates when the focus shifts to “window dressing”.
I do really like watching the Premiership, particularly with less kick and chase boredom.
Yes and newly-minted legends like ‘Champ Rugby’ also cost a lot of money for the ‘creativity’ need to produce them. At least you are getting something back when a stadium gets renamed after a company, not so sure about this. IIRC Barclay cvhanged their logo a while back, they just tilted the letters forward a bit. Goodness knows how many millions that cost.😁
Living here in the UK as a kiwi I agree the premiership is fantastic to watch mostly
The skill levels are as good as any
I love it! I do think some one the defensive structures at times are not great but heck the attack is fantastic
Bath are a scary good team depth wise
Many teams compete until they empty the bench
It makes it more supposing that Saints and not Saints made it to the CC final
And even offer that Saints are 8th but early won the CC!
I watch some Top 14 - I think it’s better than that actually
It’s very similar to SR
Don’t get me started on the URC
Most of that is terrible
The scorlines at times are close but the quality of rugby is terrible and lacking in skill
Thanks T.
One item the URC does have is more variety in defensive systems, mauinly because SA and SA coaches are involved.
Most of the Prem and SRP attacks would never have experienced anything like those in their domestic leagues.
Top 14 is a bit of an enigma, both slower and more explosive than the others - in some ways more like NFL - play-by-play monster physicality.
English Premiership are broke and are so desperate to get out of their financial hole that they are even trying to join the URC’s success story for obvious reasons.
The success of the URC after SA joined was a given, adding the country with a massive rugby following and the gateway country to the current biggest untapped global marketing platform for sport & entertainment (1.4 billion people in sub–Saharan Africa) would supercharge any competition. For reference, 290 million people in this region follow English Premiership soccer, and they average almost 13 million viewers per game. Rugby is also very popular in Africa, as an example 50% of the population of Zambia follow rugby.
It also doesn’t hurt that SA has a sports broadcaster with over 20 million pay per view subscribers across the region.
I would love to know, at what point in time will they figure out that SA Rugby has 8 official franchises and only 4 of them have a professional competition to play in?
Who’s “they” though?
SARU are just getting on their feet and some stability again, give them some time to start scouting the waters. Show initiative and get a South African team in the new european comp playing out of dubai or Lagos or somewhere feasible that will invovle North Africa.
Yes they used to pour scorn on the Pro 12/14 and any ideas of a merger - not so much now. I watched the QFs last weekend and they were a great advert for URC rugby.
If by some mircle the URC ever did entertain the Prem merger idea, they might consider the likes of Cheetahs, EP and Griquas etc as part of a new second-tier comp with select Champ sides plus the two regions Wales don’t really want!
I watch at least 2 games a weekend from the Premiership. It’s entertaining but I’ve found myself yearning for a good old fashioned arm wrestle at times this season, a throwback to what the competition was a decade or so ago.
The most stunning performance I saw was Bristol going to Welford Road and giving Leicester a pre Christmas stuffing. A matter of 6 days later, I equally enjoyed Sale showing that defence can reign supreme over attack by whooping Bristol 35-0 at Ashton Gate by slowing the Bears ruck ball down and using a swarming defence that gave their hosts no time to play their expansive style
That Bristol match really showed us (Sale) what we're capable of. We've hardly looked back in the Premiership since.
Yes I saw those two games also [one of them live] and it shows how unpredictable Prem rugby has become. If you sample the atmos live now it’s very hard to want to go back to the old days of pies and pints in the rain M!😆
South Africa left Super Rugby for two reasons. Firstly, the travel but secondly and more importantly, the style of play in the URC suited them in their goal of winning World Cups. A move that has proved very successful. There is a reason Aus, Arg, NZ and the Pacific Islands don’t win World Cups any more. Their Super Rugby is a glorified sevens tournament and it does not prepare them for test match rugby. England to some extent are the same. Prem games may be entertaining with plenty of tries and points scored but when was the last time they were competitive at Six Nations or World Cups?
Haha you sound like the stodgy English a decade back!
Yes, it’s truly a pity that Argentina doesn’t win any more the RWC since they joined Super Rugby.
Now I see.
🤦♂️
The most recent 6N and the most recent RWC.😁
I have learned a lot I did not know from this article. Thanks for writing, Nick.
The Premiership games I have watched over the past 4/5 years have generally always impressed me…some of the best rugby around, imo. When I was a coach, it is the type of rugby we aspired to achieve.
I actually think that we are in another golden age of rugby atm. Sure, there is dull and uninspiring rugby still being played, but right across the globe, the best teams are playing as good rugby as has ever been played.
I think it is the skills that are possibly a key to the way the game is now played. Forwards and backs who can pass off either hand, long or short. Passes that were frowned upon when I first played, such as from one hand, out od the back of the hand. And the pass kicks that have entered the game. Anyone who watched the Crusaders game on the weekend would have seen the great handling skills of giant prop Tamati Williams, displayed on 4/5 occasions.
But also the emergence of the “second man” or “out the back” plays. Teams like Bath, Northampton and Bristol are so skilled in this area, a joy to watch. Our SR teams down here are no slouchs in this either.
Fully agree Miz now we just need to keep working on the officiating, watching some recent NH games you could take naps in between some of those stopages!
Who would have thought that skills mattered?
Kudos to the refs and admins too in both leagues, who are determined to reward positive play and eliminate time wasters where possible. Maybe a lack of money in both places has been the catalyst for trying to keep the paying public happy and wanting more.
The impact is often interactive Miz - one league ‘sparks’ and another follows suit… I can still the Prem of even 10 years ago, which was a dull kickfest. You wouldn’t pay to watch it.
Not so now. They have become real family events and the kids are fully involved because there is constant excitement. It’s taken the place of the old fair or circus in a way!
Cooper Flagg, the Duke freshman college basketball player made close to $30 (US) million this year in “image” income.
Huge part of income which is why players often negotiate their own image rights contractually.
Before I noticed your name I thought this was going to be one of those ‘I made millions with Bitcoin’ spammers C. Almost flagged it!