Proposal for a restructured Premiership

The 2015/16 Aviva Premiership regular season is in the books.

The campaign has been a resounding success for the competition which, despite having to follow in the footsteps of a Rugby World Cup, has seen high attendances, noticeable improvements in skill levels and contributed the best team in Europe, Saracens, as well as three of the four European Rugby Champions Cup semi-finalists.

There is merit in the argument of if it’s not broken, don’t fix it, but in the ever-changing environment of professional rugby, the competition cannot afford to rest on its laurels, especially with a new mammoth TV deal confirmed for the Top 14 from 2019 onwards.

The new Elite Player Squad agreement with the Premiership clubs is currently being negotiated and it is rumoured that Eddie Jones and the RFU will come out of the agreement with more access to the EPS players than ever before and Premiership clubs set to receive higher compensation as a result.

With the symbiont success that England and the Premiership clubs have had this season, never has it been clearer that having the two forces work in conjunction with each other can elicit benefits for both.

One potential way of achieving that would be to restructure the Premiership in such a way as it would be expanded, increasing England’s talent pool of available players, whilst also reducing the number of games players are being asked to play, therefore keeping them fresher for the knockout European rounds and international competition.

There are a number of reasons behind the southern hemisphere’s dominance in rugby, but one significant factor is that their elite players play less games. This has been challenged of late by the emergence of the Japanese Top League and players seeking extra financial security by taking ‘top up’ contracts in the offseason, but for the majority of international players in New Zealand and Australia, they still play less games than their northern hemisphere rivals.

If the Premiership were to be expanded to 14 teams, with two seven-team conferences, then the goal of a larger talent pool and a less intensive playing schedule is possible.

The league could be split geographically into northern and southern conferences in order to make travel for fans as simple as possible. Each team would play the six other sides in their conference both home and away over the course of the season, as well as the seven sides from the other conference once per season. Teams would alternate between having three home and four away and four home and three away games against opposition from outside of their conference on a season-by-season basis.

This would reduce the total number of regular season games per team in the Premiership from 22 to 19, creating three ‘free’ weeks in the current calendar. One could be slotted in before the beginnings of each of the autumn tests, Six Nations and summer tours, allowing the EPS players to be at their freshest heading into those periods. There are of course commercial implications to reducing the season by three games/weeks, something which could be minimised by an expanded playoff structure and a two-legged relegation decider between the bottom-placed sides in the two conferences.

Between the quality displayed by Bristol, Doncaster, Yorkshire and Bedford in the Greene King IPA Championship playoffs and the performances of the Premiership sides in the Aviva ‘A’ League, there seems to be enough playing talent available to make the shift from 12 to 14 sides. The dilution of talent, at least on paper, would look to be minimal.

Both Bristol and Yorkshire have the infrastructure required to be integral assets to the Premiership, whilst Doncaster have surpassed all expectations in the Championship this season and though they don’t quite have the stadia and academy foundations of the other two clubs, they would be a rags to riches story that could eventually rival that of the Exeter Chiefs. All three teams, with a selection of ‘A’ team stars scooped up from the current Premiership incumbents, could be competitive in an expanded Premiership.

It’s a radical proposal and with the new EPS agreement set to be announced and the current TV deal locked in with BT until 2021, it’s not something that could happen anytime soon. The EPS agreement, assuming it is signed in the coming weeks, will likely last through till the end of the 2019/20 season, at which point the BT deal will have a year left to run.

Both the Premiership clubs and RFU will be manoeuvring for leverage at that point and with participation numbers, attendances and money in English rugby increasing on an annual basis, this is a potentially win-win restructure for both club and country that can help English rugby take the next step in the professional era.

The sport, in theory, would have the financial muscle and fan interest to support a 14-team top tier competition and based on a combination of participation numbers and the improvements to Premiership academies, the pool of players available stands to be larger than ever before. In four years’ time, increasing the Premiership to 14 teams might not be a luxury, it could well be a necessity.