BLOG: Pigs might fly in rugby union's championship

ROTHERHAM Titans certainly know what it’s like to swim against the tide after Saturday’s close 32-25 defeat at Worcester.

And it’s about time the RFU sat down and started to address the issue if they honestly want the Championship to be a viable undercard to the Premiership.

That’s because rugby continues to get the promotion and relegation issue horribly wrong at the top level of the game.

Why? I’ll tell you why. How on earth can two teams go head-to-head and expect a realistic contest when one has been handed around £1 million in central funding to assist their team-building and everyone else gets a quarter of that. Every time Worcester Warriors trot out this season that will be the case, with all the cash they have they should swat aside everyone else with consumate ease.

And isn’t that exactly what the RFU and particularly Premiership Rugby wants? There is a school of thought that the Prem boys are happy to accommodate the old-fashioned notion of promotion and relegation, as long as their relegated club comes straight back the following season.

In their ideal world, the Premiership will consist of 13 clubs: 12 playing and one spending a year rebuilding in the second tier. Everyone’s happy, the little clubs will get to play a biggie and each September have a fleeting hope that they might make the promised land.

The biggie, though, gets a whopping £800 grand parachute payment and in a game where money doesn’t talk it SHOUTS then they bounce straight back.

That has happened practically every year, apart from Exeter’s rise last term, and it will happen again this year. Nothing remotely against Worcester here.

What do you think of the gulf between the likes of the Titans and rugby's big boys? Use the "write a comment" button to post your views.

I remember a decade ago when they were in rugby’s backwaters and full praise to the Sixways club for building firm foundations and a good club over a sustained period of time. It was great on Saturday to see how far Worcester have come.

The problem lies with rugby; the RFU and the Premiership.

For all the rhetoric about making the Championship a full-time, professional division the only way that will happen is if the whole financial top-end of the game is altruistically restructured.

At the moment, some have-not clubs are desperately spending cash they can’t afford in pursuit of the pot of gold at the end of the rugby rainbow. That’s why a quarter of the Championship almost went bust last year.

Let’s have a level playing field for once and then we’ll have a division which is sustainable. Anyway, must go. Just seen a Gloucester Old Spot winging its way past the window.

Worcester's bench too strong for Titans - reader verdict.

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