Premiership clubs ready to push to suspend relegation for five years

EXCLUSIVE: Gloucester chief executive admits they must win ‘hearts and minds’ for radical top-flight proposals

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England’s leading clubs could suspend Premiership promotion and relegation for as long as five years if plans to revamp the top end of the domestic game win the support of the Rugby Football Union.

Firm proposals have yet to be tabled, but as the clubs want to expand the elite league and then pull up the drawbridge at the end of next season, the clock is ticking ever faster.

Stephen Vaughan, the Gloucester chief executive, said this week that the existing Premiership sides would have to win the “hearts and minds” argument as well as convince the rugby public of the financial case for such a fundamental restructuring.

“We absolutely see this as a progressive move for the sport in this country,” he told The Independent, “but it’s up to us to demonstrate that the idea has sufficient merit to gain acceptance from the RFU, the Second Division clubs – all the stakeholders in the game. If we can’t show that it works for them, it won’t work for anyone because it won’t be going through.”

It emerged in February that Premier Rugby, the top-flight clubs’ administrative body, intended to press for a moratorium on a promotion and relegation system that has been in place, with occasional tinkerings, since the launch of the English league system three decades ago.

There has been a growing belief amongst chairmen and chief executives that only three teams playing in the second-tier Championship – Bristol, Worcester and Yorkshire Carnegie – possess the infrastructure and financial muscle to survive in the Premiership.

One of those clubs will go up as of right at the end of this season, replacing London Welsh, who have not won a single competitive game since winning promotion last year. If the proposals are accepted, the others could expect to join a closed-off Premiership for the 2016-17 campaign.