The Tender Process for the 2023-4 Season
The RFU has taken a giant leap forward in announcing the eight clubs to be accepted for this, the third cycle of the Premier 15s.
They are Bristol Bears, Ealing Trailfinders, Exeter Chiefs, Gloucester-Hartpury, Harlequins, Leicester Tigers, Loughborough Lightning/Northampton Saints and Saracens
Of the current ten clubs in the league DMP Sharks, Sale Sharks, University of Worcester Warriors and Wasps are missing. Only two of them have the chance of being added to the final list.
The new entries are Ealing Trailfinders and Leicester Tigers, with Loughborough Lightning now linked formally with Northampton Saints.
The New Faces
Trailfinders, lying close to Wasps in west London, strengthened their claim enormously when Giselle Mather left Wasps to become their new DoR.
Tigers have taken over Lichfield, once a top women’s club back in Premiership days, but their name is not mentioned. They lost all their top players (Scarratt, Hunter, Hunt…) when their bid to join the inaugural Premier 15s in 2017 was turned down.
The curiosity in this tie-up is that the two clubs lie so far apart. We have to assume that Tigers’ huge prestige means Lichfield’s identity will disappear below sea-level.
Could the same go for the Lightning-Saints connection? Geographically, the obvious link for Lightning would have been Tigers, just a few miles down the road. But rugby doesn’t operate according to the rules of simplicity. Could you get through life with a name as long as Loughborough Lightning-Northampton Saints (38 letters)?
But the 64k dollar question is: how strong will the two newcomers prove to be? They can have the best coaches imaginable (they do!), but where do the players come from to match the standards of sides with six years experience? Will they have the financial resources to entice the odd Red Rose in with a tasty contract? Trailfinders have managed it with their men’s team operating in the Championship, but this is a different kettle of fish entirely.
If they look abroad as Exeter did, they risk running up against the RFU’s long-term wish to give English-qualified players preference. It’s noticeable that recent Chiefs’ sides have contained fewer overseas players than before.
No Room at the Inn (yet?)
It comes as no surprise to see which names are missing. The fates of Wasps and Worcester have covered the sports pages for weeks. And now the RFU has passed judgement on the men’s clubs, ending their hopes of a second coming. The effect on Wasps women has been far worse than on Warriors.
Sale Sharks are a quite different case. They were one of the two to be brought into the Premier 15s Mach 2, at the expense of Richmond and Firwood Waterloo. They have the advantage of being attached to a Gallagher Premiership club and started this sixth season with much better results than before. But they have acquired precious few leading English players, having to seek elsewhere for new signings.
It’s to their advantage that, if DMP did get the chop, they could be retained as a beacon of hope for the whole of the north of England.
If they failed in their bid, that would surely leave egg on the face of the RFU. Why introduce a new club, only to oust it two years later?
Other clubs had dreams of reaching the starry heights, notably Bath and London Irish. Each was handicapped by geography: Bath only a handful of miles from Bristol; Irish yet another London hopeful.
An elite group out on its own, or the last step in a ladder?
Their futures go hand in hand with all the well established clubs in the Championship, one grade below the elite. The gap between what we can crudely call Division One and Division Two was already vast. It can only grow inexorably wider.
In the men’s game there are hopes that a fair system of promotion and relegation may yet be introduced. In the women’s game it is hard to imagine a similar arrangement succeeding.
We read that the selection panel, (for which read the recently formed company WP15Ltd) ’made a strong recommendation [to the RFU] to explore how greater geographical spread can be provided in the league’.
A remarkable admission of failure: the RFU has had five long years to ponder the issue, but no-one has yet spotted a way of assuring it. Of the eight clubs confirmed, Loughborough is the northernmost, but no-one can pretend that Loughborough is in the north.
The only club anywhere near Scotland, DMP, have been backmarkers almost from the start. All the trends have been for players to move south to find high quality rugby alongside a paying job. Economics talk, not least in this corner of the sporting world. Perhaps a large prize should be offered for someone who can come up with a plausible solution.
One such, to involve Newcastle in some shape or form, was mooted years ago but not followed up.
Ealing’s introduction brings a third London club into play. Wasps have announced their intention to join their menfolk in Coventry. Let’s hope they can win and retain the favour of the local community far better than the men’s club has done.
Once more the danger is that vast tracts of the nation will be left fallow.*
Where do we go from here?
The newly established company in charge is left with insoluble problems. They have to decide how to even out the inequalities of funding, to my mind a shortcoming in the initial regulations of 2017. How can they ensure that clubs offer more or less equal contracts to their players? If they can’t, then the drift towards the three of four most affluent will continue unabated, to the detriment of the league itself.
The only time players tend to leave a successful club is when they are denied regular rugby by the presence of so many test players on the books.
*For those interested they include: the entire south coast and hinterland from Kent to Dorset; the West Midlands; East Anglia, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumbria and Northumbria.
