Exeter Chiefs celebrate exciting era of thriving instead of just surviving

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/apr/16/breakdown-exeter-chiefs-premiership-exciting-era

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Exeter in the sunshine. A full house on Sunday to watch the Chiefs move back into the top four of the Premiership and celebrate aspiration. Neil Warnock, who started the season in football’s Premier League at Selhurst Park with Crystal Palace, was at Sandy Park in one of the many hospitality boxes that have helped transform a minor club into one of the big players in English rugby.

A couple of days later, Exeter city council’s executive proposed that the Chiefs’ chairman, Tony Rowe, who has overseen the rise of the club from the lower divisions to play-off contention, the freedom of the city in recognition of what the club was doing for the region from a national and international perspective.

Exeter were promoted to the Premiership in 2010 after beating Bristol in the Championship play-off final. They were expected to be one-season wonders, but they managed to achieve what others before them, even Worcester, had failed to do by thriving rather than just surviving. Their head coach Rob Baxter, who as a player had been part of the Chiefs’ rise, has been impressive throughout, not someone who is captured by emotion in victory or defeat.

Progress has been made each season to the point where Exeter now not just attract players of ambition but international experience. The Lions’ second-row Geoff Parling will be at Sandy Park next season, joining his former Leicester and England colleague Thomas Waldrom, while Baxter has nurtured a number of young players, not least Jack Nowell and Henry Slade. The days of battling either to get into the Championship or stay there are long gone.

Exeter have been an advert for promotion and relegation, a reason to dream, but their success was not an accident, built on the financial and rugby acumen of Rowe and Baxter. They owned their own ground, unlike Rotherham before them and London Welsh afterwards who were forced to move to meet the Premiership’s entry criteria and become tenants, and developed so that it became an asset that served them throughout the week rather than just on match day, helping overcome the financial imbalance with established clubs that contributed to Welsh’s quick demise this season.

Premiership Rugby is currently negotiating with the Rugby Football Union about a renewal of the elite player agreement that runs out next year. It wants the size of the top flight to be renewed as well as the issue of relegation to be reviewed, using the failure of London Welsh, who are on course to finish with the fewest number of points in a Premiership season, as a reason why the Championship needs to be strengthened, financially and structurally, before its clubs are allowed access to the elite.

The Premiership clubs are emboldened by their victory in the battle over the European Cup and the RFU’s chief executive Ian Ritchie, in World Cup year, will find his considerable diplomatic skills tested to the limit. Decisions on the size of the Premiership and relegation are the province of the RFU’s council, which represents the whole game rather than the richest part of it, and they will take some convincing.

The clubs are ready for a fight and it will not be a question of what Ritchie and his Premiership Rugby counterpart Mark McCafferty can agree between them. The battle lines have been drawn, as the Saracens’ chairman, Nigel Wray, who has been involved in professional rugby from the outset, outlined in his programme notes for last weekend’s match against Leicester.

“In a domestic World Cup year, we are coming up to an interesting period when the Premiership clubs have to agree a new deal with the RFU,” he wrote. “A possible 14-team league in two years’ time, with no promotion and relegation for four years to enable clubs to invest long term. A discussion on minimum standards if you want to be a member of the Premiership; proper ground, established crowd and support levels, and a minimum spend on players in order to be competitive. Finally, to agree a new wage cap as the existing one simply doesn’t work.

“First, we are all playing in our premier tournament in Europe with a different set of rules: the Irish no wage cap, the French arguably one that’s more than double ours. That’s simply not a level playing field. Then in the UK it effectively works that the more young England players you produce, the more you are kicked in the teeth. If we and other clubs like Leicester, say, have eight players that we estimate at the start of the season will be in Stuart Lancaster’s squad, then we have to have more players to cover their absence for probably half the season.

“To rub salt into the wounds, the RFU’s payment per player is then shared amongst all the clubs so that we, for example, don’t get much more than half of the payment per player, so how are we going to be able to afford to take on a whole player? Finally, the RFU payment is not even allowed against the wage cap, so England producing clubs are further penalised. That clearly is not the RFU’s intention! All this is up for debate. And indeed it must be sorted out. We can’t go on like this.”

It was an unequivocal statement by an experienced administrator who is not known for an extreme hawkish tendency and his message is clear: increase the Premiership to 14, and only shareholders Bristol, Worcester and Leeds from this season’s Championship would have the means to compete and the facilities laid down by Wray, and the rest would have to undergo significant change to have a chance of joining an elite which would effectively become self-perpetuating, with or without relegation, and in danger of becoming rotten at the core.

Saracens face Clermont Auvergne in the European Champions Cup on Saturday in Saint-Etienne, aiming to reach the final for the second successive season. While Exeter’s model has been one of sustainability, Sarries have built their rise on debt. If the salary cap is reviewed, will it contain a provision that clubs will be expected to spend what they have rather than rely on unsecured debt?

A report into the finances of the Top 14 clubs this week revealed how they were operating at a record debt, saying it showed the loss-making management of professional rugby as a whole.

There is no question that the gap between the Premiership and Championship is widening in terms of resources. It will not be long before the salary cap, if it survives, will be £6m, which is effectively £7m given the dispensation for two marquee players. Unless a Championship club has a lavishly loaded backer, such as Bristol, they will struggle like London Welsh. A coherent policy for the Championship is needed otherwise the Premiership will be a no-entry zone.

A Premiership of 14 would lead to a number of dead matches long before the end of a season, unless the play-off system was expanded, but it would also be a league of two nations: the well-off and the less so. How long before there were calls for a European league or a world tournament and let the rest go hang?

The likes of Saracens want to be able to compete with Toulon on a more equal level, but as the club’s New Zealand second-row Ali Williams pointed out this week, younger players are joining the exodus from the southern hemisphere to the point where international rugby, the breadwinner, is becoming threatened. It is one reason why Ritchie has to stand firm. The model should be Exeter.

• This is an extract taken from the Guardian’s weekly rugby union email, the Breakdown. To subscribe just visit this page, find ‘The Breakdown’ and follow the instructions.