Nigel Melville proposes two-league conference system for Premiership

RFU interim chief executive Nigel Melville has proposed an idea of having an expanded Premiership competition that involves a league based system.

The English tier one domestic competition is currently played with 12 teams with the bottom placed team facing a relegation and will be replaced by the winner of the Championship tournament.

With a number of clubs and players urging the Premiership to reconsider their relegation concept, Melville believes a two-league expanded system with 16 teams divided into two groups could be the way forward to protect the interest of the competition.

"If you expand, you have to go into a conference structure. You would go to 14 or 16 teams. Two eights would give you a true geographic spread," Melville said.

"Two eights would play home and away, then go into quarters, then go into semis. Then you could justify a proper conference structure with playoffs and fewer games. Do we really need the [Premiership Rugby] cup? Is it that important?

"If you look at the NFL, they don't have a cup competition. They focus on their core business.

"We've got nearly 1,200 professional players in the country and maybe the reason is that we've got so many competitions going on with elite players.

"That's money going out of the game. It's not going into infrastructure. Maybe we get down to 1,000 or 800 players."

Nevertheless, Melville understands that the process might take time and will involve a number of discussions with the club owners and Premiership heads.

"You can put things on the agenda," he said. "You can have those conversations about these issues. With the Premiership, we have these chats all the time.

"Sometimes less is more. It's always about now [for the clubs], or about next week, especially with the league at the moment.

"But strategic thinking is about looking at the bigger picture and I think we need to do that."