Margin__Walker wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 9:20 am
sockwithaticket wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 8:59 am
Margin__Walker wrote: ↑Thu Jun 08, 2023 8:10 am
Every club in the league is on shakey ground to some extent. Leicester should be okay in the short term with the injection of investor cash and they are such a big name, with a big fan base that I think they'd always cling on. Looking at it with no inside knowledge, perhaps Newcastle, Sale and Exeter look fairly vulnerable. Exeter are clearly cutting costs this season and Newcastle have already done so. Sale have a committed owner, but he's not super rich and they struggle for revenue. If investors walk away though, every team would be in trouble, with perhaps Saints the most secure in terms of sustainability.
The imminent restoration of the salary cap to the £7m mark that contributed to so many clubs' debts is absolutely mental. Especially as they still haven't restored relegation. Only the financial blow of relegation justified clubs spending so far out of their comfort zone.
If anything this season should have been a wake up call for the remaining clubs to get their shit together.
The on field product is going to suck if most clubs do reform their spending but a couple do spend to the higher cap and win pretty much all their games.
It's all incredibly challenging and I'm not sure how several teams spending a huge amount more than others would generate interest in the league. Ultimately the first thing to do would be to ensure the EQP requirements keep rising (realise the irony here given LI were never market leading here). If you're going to make it a ten team league, let's make it a predominantly home grown one. Fine with a few stars here and there, but let's the balance right.
I agree with that, I was thinking about this last night and ultimately there's a few things at play here:
1) We must bring wages down to a sustainable level
2) The "product" must remain attractive to spectators and viewers
3) We cannot irrevocably damage the pathway to the international team
4) The health and stability of the league as a spectator sport that provides reliable income to pro players is secondary to European success
If wages come down, we will lose players. That is a fact. But it is also a fact that we pay some ridiculous wages and losing those would be good. Quins are likely to lose Marcus Smith to Racing92 for 2024 and as much as I will hate to see him go, I would much rather take that than have the club go bust. Will the overall quality of the league suffer? Yes, probably. If we made it so non-EQPs were only present in exceptional cases, would that help in this scenario? I think so. With less money to go around, it's not going to be the big names that get signed from overseas, it's going to be the Saffer/NZ/etc journeymen who pad out squads. And there's already plenty of those milling around (including in the Championship). So if we prevent that, then maybe we lose a Marcus Smith overseas for a few years but the next 2 are discovered because they're actually getting gametime and aren't stuck behind Joost van der Afrikaaner-Burger and Johnno Bondi-Wagga.
This is a much, much longer conversation, but the Kiwis have largely the right setup with their semi-pro comp and then Super Rugby. We could do something similar with the Championship and the Premiership, but there's too many sides who view themselves as temporarily embarrassed kings of Europe for that to happen. What really works with the Kiwi setup is that it really does engage the fans at the lower level. No-one gives a shit about club rugby in general in this country, and each league is essentially isolated from each other. When I lived in Richmond I enjoyed going to see them or London Scottish but only as a novelty; I've been to see lower league teams with lots of Quins players playing before and while that did pique my interest it did feel very strange given they were on loan but forming a good chunk of the starting XV, and the lack of cohesion was obvious.
In my ideal world, the Championship sides would be the equivalent of the semi-pro NZ sides. Good English players all playing and earning enough money to make a living without it being ruinous, where some players who don't kick on will drop out to be replaced by the next rank but where young talent rubs shoulders with old pros, and where the interest for the casual fan is seeing the evolution of the next set of English players. The Premiership sides would be the Super Rugby equivalent with a similar kind of relationship to the Champ sides. So a good young player would make waves in the Championship and then pick up a Premiership contract. If we keep it largely regional rather than an open market, then the interest carries over from the Champ side to the Premiership side, and vice versa.
Obviously there's a lot that can't work the same here. Academies would need to be rethought. The way the clubs are distributed across the country doesn't make life easy. PRL and co would be voting for a huge drop in revenue. The domestic season would need to be completely rethought - either so that the Champ games get near-equal billing but are played on less popular evenings, or they're in a different block entirely. I think that's a bonus, but I realise a lot of this is real pie in the sky stuff, so, y'know. I also think that lower standard of rugby is still a draw for spectators and viewers IF the style is still attractive (as Quins showed, you don't need to be NZ or Toulouse to make people really enjoy the game) and if there's a reason to watch if you're just a fan of English rugby or even England rugby, i.e. it's part of a clear pathway. Much like how watching the U20s is more fun for most of us than watching Ealing vs Ampthill.
edit: Also, jesus, I don't know if it's just that years of following a side even more bonkers than Quins has given you a very thick skin but you're dealing with this all very well. As one of the most level headed and fair posters on English rugby it's doubly horrible that you have to suffer like this. If you were a cunt I'd feel bad for you but this ain't right. Especially after a season where you and I started off discussing how ridiculous it was that Irish were doing so badly and ended with you just missing out on the playoffs.
