The latest Rugby Half Hour podcast
Hopefully a little easier to download too….any feedback greatly received. Leave a comment at the end of the page.
You may find these two links useful too….the full judgment on London Welsh and their promotion to the Premiership.
And the minimum standards criteria…RIP…
https://rugbyhalfhour.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/criteria.pdf
…and we hope you are too. Chris and Ian are back with another podcast looking at Leicester’s involved in England’s demise in South Africa.
…Chris Egerton and Ian Cockerill chew over the latest stories in rugby union and ask what’s wrong with the Heineken Cup?
As England prepare for South Africa, Saracens prepared for life without Andy Farrell and Scotland continue to party, The Rugby Half Hour podcast looks at some fascinating summer tours – will England really try to be direct against South Africa??? and there’s a look at the major stories over the week.
The Rugby Half Hour – June 6th
Our podcast is generally published each Tuesday or Wednesday – and we are working on new ways of making it much more accessible. Do please bear with us over the summer as we continue to develop this site – but it will improver over the course of the next few weeks.
Thanks for your patience.
London Welsh are currently locking horns more seriously this morning with the RFU over their non-promotion from the RFU Championship, after they beat Cornish Pirates in Wednesday’s Final 2nd leg.
The trouble with this process is that no-one knows quite what is being asked of Welsh or in fact, any other Championship club. Well, to help that process, I’ve obtained a copy of the document circulated by the RFU’s auditors PMP Legacy to outline the standards required for promotion.
For 40 pages, it goes into considerable detail – and runs to around 99 criteria, all of which has to be passed for a club to be recommended to pass the audit. It’s not been published before. To summarise, the Primacy of Tenure is defined in the document as follows :
· Clubs have to schedule home matches at any point on Fri, Sat and Sun/bank holidays between 12pm and 8pm, including any home semi final
· Allow broadcasters to show matches at any point given appropriate notice
· Final match of regular season is at any kick off time on afternoons of both Saturday and Sunday.
The RFU has the right to ignore findings of audit for both Premiership and Championship clubs and waive need to comply. But my impression is that such a move would be a nuclear option in terms of the political relations between the RFU board and the Premiership that it seems unlikely.
One nugget to come out that is interesting surrounds Wasps .The criteria document clearly states Wasps, Saracens and London Irish are all in breach, relating to Primacy of Tenure but they are exempt from punishment with one exception.
If one of them had finished bottom and whoever won the Championship couldn’t meet the key criteria, there would have been a two-legged playoff between bottom club in Premiership and the Championship’s champion to decide who went up.
That could easily have been Wasps…and can you imagine their reaction at being called back a month after the end of the season to play a two legged playoff against a side still battle-hardened from the Championship Final? Can you imagine Stuart Lancaster’s thoughts on having to remove all Wasps players from his England squad? Can you imagine Wasps fans – having thought that they were safe – reacting to the news that actually, they weren’t?
Or is this a clause inserted into the document for legal reasons to try to win any possibly court action? We’ll see…anyway. Have a look for yourself.
All I would like to know is where a stadium as modern as the Kassam Stadium fails to meet the Criteria
And here comes the review of the Premiership Final.
But more than that, if you want to know why London Welsh think they can beat the RFU’s rap when it comes to being promoted to the Premiership, we may just have a clue…..
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