What has long been inevitable will become reality this weekend: London Welsh will be condemned to finish bottom of the Premiership. It may happen on Saturday if Newcastle secure at least two points at London Irish but it will be confirmed a day later when the Exiles host title contenders Bath, the team they secured their only point of the season against by running in four tries at the Recreation Ground in September. The question is not who will win, but how many the home side go down by.
Miracles may occur, but not the impossible. Even if Newcastle fail to secure more than one point all season, London Welsh’s only hope of survival, other than the winners of the Championship failing to meet the entry criteria for the top flight, would be to secure maximum points from their remaining five fixtures, which are all against teams in the top half of the table, including last season’s Premiership finalists, Northampton and Saracens. The average score in their first matches against the quintet this season is 12-54.
The task remaining for London Welsh, which will be difficult enough, will be to avoid finishing with the fewest league points of any club in the Premiership’s history. Bedford and Rotherham hold the record with three, but the former secured a win in 1999‑2000 while the latter profited from the introduction of bonus points.
As Welsh have yet to hold an English opponent to single figures – their closest match was the 24-13 defeat by Harlequins in January – they will need to repeat what they managed at Bath in the second round of the campaign when their cause already looked doomed.
“We have certain targets we have set as a group and will try to fulfil them,” says Rowland Phillips, who took over as London Welsh’s head coach this month when Justin Burnell was sacked after the 74-19 defeat by Exeter. “We have not spoken about being the worst team ever or the second worst because there is not a lot of difference between the two. We are trying to improve and the mindset is one of looking forward. The morale of the players has been outstanding in very difficult circumstances and you learn a lot about yourself when things are not going well.”
To say things have not been going well is like describing Lionel Messi as not a bad footballer. At the pre-season launch of the Premiership in August, Burnell bubbled with optimism, despite the hasty recruitment of 25 players after London Welsh earned promotion in June. “We want to come in and compete, not talk about hope and survival and crossing our fingers,” he said. “It would be negative if we used the old cliches about staying up.”
From their opening game, at home to Exeter when they lost 52-0, teams have attacked London Welsh – who have conceded only 16 penalties but 114 tries in their 17 league matches, and been hit for 50 or more points eight times. They are without a win all season in any competition and their plight is one reason why Premiership Rugby has floated the idea of expanding the division by two clubs from 2016‑17 and suspending relegation for an unspecified period to give Championship clubs time to develop their facilities and budgets at a time when the financial gap between the two divisions has turned into a chasm.
London Welsh have received less than half the money from central funds that established clubs get and that, added to the short time they had to recruit players and plan for the season, gave them a hill too steep to climb. “It has all had an impact,” says Phillips, the former Wales flanker who joined as defence coach last November. “Winning promotion was an incredible achievement and while you hear rumours about an end to promotion and relegation, all we can influence as coaches and players is the present. I am here for the next five matches and we have not discussed anything beyond that.”
The danger for London Welsh is that relegation could see them exiled from the top flight for the foreseeable future. Unlike the two main Championship contenders, Bristol and Worcester, they have neither a billionaire backer nor the infrastructure needed to sustain newcomers in the Premiership. They are tenants at the Kassam Stadium in Oxford, where the highest attendance has been 4,357 for the November match against Northampton (compared to 10,045 in their other season in the league two years ago), while maintaining their home in Richmond.
“We do not want to keep anyone out of the Premiership but those coming in must be prepared to invest in their infrastructure,” said the Exeter chairman, Tony Rowe, whose club have spent five seasons in the top flight and confounded expectation. “You cannot just appear in this league with a clubhouse and a bit of grass. The idea is for the Championship to work with the Premiership rather than the Rugby Football Union, which is not interested in putting money into professional rugby, so we can improve the standard in it. No decisions have been made and no one is talking about ring-fencing, but people need to understand the mess professional rugby in England is in below the Premiership.”
The Championship clubs are suspicious of Premiership Rugby’s motives. “We are 100% against what they want to do and I think the RFU will go against it,” said the Nottingham president, Nigel Bettinson-Eatch. “I can understand that they want more stability of investment in the Premiership, but with nothing to play for why would Championship clubs invest the millions we do? That would probably stop in the lower tiers. London Scottish, for example, have been doing very well and have significant backing, but that comes through knowing the end goal is Premiership Rugby.”
The season has been a nightmare for London Welsh but they continue to dream. “This is a big club and the people running it want to build it up,” said Phillips. “There is a commitment to the Kassam Stadium as our home and that is testament to the ambition here. There is still fire in us and that is down to the energy and positivity Justin instilled. We can learn a lot from the hardships of the season and this is a determined club with a lot of pride which has bounced back before and will do so again. It has had periods at the top end in the past and there is no reason why that will not happen again in the future.”
This time, though, it could be beyond their control.
