Yesterday it was reported that London Irish have been bought by a consortium backed by former F1 team owner, Eddie Jordan. He has seemingly saved London Irish from the point of no return by buying the club's intellectual property and brand rights after the preferred bidder, a German businessman, withdrew from the process. English rugby has been undergoing a reshuffle in in the last year and the clubs who went bust have, alongside the other non-premiership English teams, been given the chance to apply for a place in an expanded second division. Although it seems Eddie Jordan may not be fully on board with this plan.
Before I go into more detail about the London Irish takeover and its particular ramifications for the wider game in England and beyond, let's delve into the situation more generally. During and after covid, four English teams went under. Wasps were first to go and they were swiftly followed by Worcester. London Irish survived for longer and actually had their highest league finish with a young, exciting squad just before they went under due to no one buying the club in time. The fourth team to go were the Jersey Reds who had just won the Championship. They were unable to secure funding going forward from the Jersey governemnt an other investors due to not being allowed to be promoted and a general lack of clarity as to where they stood in the English rugby pyramid.
These situations forced those at the top of the game to make some changes. They have now lowered the infrastructure requirements for teams to be promoted and offered a two-leg playoff between the bottom Premiership team and top championship team. Unfortunately, the only two championship teams who could meet that criteria seem unlikely to win the league so there is once again no chance of promotion. As i mentioned before, the RFU wants a stronger championship. That is despite cutting its funding which has partially caused many of the problems we see today. In order to do that, they have given the big clubs who went bust the chance to apply for a place in the yet-to-be-named second division(I'll simply refer to it as the championship for brevity) and this has caused much consternation from current championship clubs who feel that they have already been unfairly treated and are now being overlooked once again.
I am sympathetic to their cause and if this were football I would agree entirely but I am a pragmatist and rugby desperately needs the likes of Wasps to legitimise a future second division. It is a necessary step, even if parachuting teams back into professional ruby does leave a bad taste in the mouth. The likes of Wasps will help bring eyes to the league and help attract sponsors which will benefit other teams. Wasps seem to be in a good place with their return having seemingly begun the plans for the construction of a new stadium in Batley which is thought to have a capacity of roughly 28,000 seats. Worcester are also showing signs of progress and already have Sixways so their stadium issues are sorted if they can make it back. The questions surrounding London Irish on the other hand, are far more numerous and consequential.
As i just mentioned, there are still a lot of questions surrounding London Irish and a potential professional return. Two things that were conspicuously missing from the announcement were the potential acquisition of the training ground and precise information om where the team would play, although it does seem to be their intention to stay in West London. Those questions pale in comparison to the other one that was brought to the forefront by this group. And that is, which league London Irish will play in if/when the club returns to the professional game. It seems to be their intention to explore the option of playing in the URC instead of domestic English rugby. They want an immediate return to top level rugby and, at the moment, the URC could offer that whilst England is offering a potential place in a new championship. The URC angle has been previously explored by Wasps and briefly Ealing but nothing has come of it. It would certainly be a coup for the URC to have a London-based team join the league but I do wonder if this is a power play to attempt to force Premiership rugby and the RFU to allow London Irish straight back into the Premiership.
Regardless of the detail, this group seems to want to do things a little differently which makes sense given what happened to London Irish last time. They are also exploring a fan ownership model that may resemble German football although we'll have to await more details on that. Whatever the case may be, London Irish is better off today than it was yesterday and that is very good news for the sport. There are a lot of things up in the air but I personally hope that London Irish finds a way to remain within the English rugby ecosystem.
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