Is English rugby making the most of the talent available to it? The question is a direct one and, to Conor O’Shea’s credit, he does not duck it. “The simple answer is no,” replies the Rugby Football Union’s director of performance, sitting in the national squad’s hotel in Bagshot on a Monday morning. In the middle of a Six Nations championship, with a major Calcutta Cup clash looming, the Murrayfield outcome is currently not the only issue focusing minds around Twickenham.
Where to start? Late on Friday the RFU confirmed a six-week deadline has now been set for a workable set of minimum standards to be agreed with those clubs just below the Premiership, with a view to kickstarting a recast second tier in autumn 2025. Along with untangling the knotty issues of promotion, relegation, funding and player development pathways, there has to be a solid basic governance framework underpinning it all. Six weeks? Historically those things have taken years.
The ticking clock was further highlighted at Ealing Trailfinders on Sunday. Had the Championship leaders not butchered two gilt-edged try-scoring chances, hit the posts twice or conceded two scores after interceptions they would have deservedly beaten Leicester of the Premiership in their cup semi-final. Admittedly it was not a totally full-strength Tigers side but any newcomer watching the scrums would have concluded it was Ealing who were the top-tier big dogs.
Then again, the crowd was a modest 2,565 for one of the bigger days in Ealing’s history, restoking the debate about how many sustainable professional clubs England can actually accommodate. So how, exactly, should people now be regarding Ealing: as a friendly, well-coached pro club complete with a top-tier women’s side and direct links with nearby Brunel University or as a privately funded pipe dream entitled to only the most basic RFU funding?
It all boils down to the structure that works best for the English national team, future generations of young players and the domestic leagues themselves. England are not the only ones wrestling with structural dilemmas: Scotland have just announced the scrapping of the Super Series competition meant to support the country’s two pro sides while Wales are also seeking to rationalise their pathways. As O’Shea rightly observes, the first rule of elite player development is sacrosanct: they have to play.
Hence the revival of the England A team, after almost eight years’ absence, against Portugal this weekend. In its absence, as Eddie Jones found, it is harder to identify those capable of thriving outside their comfort zones. O’Shea, though, already shares the belief of England’s Under-20s coach, Mark Mapletoft, in these pages last month that a brighter red rose future is on the horizon. “These aren’t just normal kids coming through our system at the moment … they’re pretty special,” says O’Shea. “From 17 to 21 or 22, if they’re properly managed, we have what could be a generational team. Every country has talent but if we get the right playing structures ... I’m really excited about what England has. We have oodles of talent.”
OK, but what are the “right” structures? The collective aim has to be to establish a league beneath the Premiership, after years of underinvestment and political spats, which works both as a finishing school for the next generation and as an entertaining, vibrant competition in its own right. Nottingham’s chairman, Alistair Bow, suggested last month that the RFU’s representatives have treated talks with the Championship sides as “a tick‑box exercise” but O’Shea argues otherwise. “It frustrates me that there’s this perception that the RFU doesn’t care about the Championship. If we didn’t we wouldn’t be sitting down saying: ‘Let’s get this right, do it properly and make it grow.’ The value of what the Championship does has never been in doubt – but it’s not just the Championship.”
He also insists the RFU still believes in the concept of promotion and relegation. “Everyone needs to see there is a bridge and a realistic opportunity, through growth, to get up into the Premiership. We want that to happen. But also that teams coming up through the national leagues have that opportunity. There’ll probably be two sorts of clubs in the newly branded ‘tier two’. Clubs that are very comfortable where they’re at because it’s costly to be in the Premiership. But if you look at the Ealings and the Coventrys … it might take a year or a few years but let’s get something we all buy into.”
And, even more crucially, something we can all be genuinely positive about. The RFU’s strict policy of not picking players based overseas – “We need the best players playing in England if we’re going to have a league that grows and is commercial; people will walk away if not” – divides opinion but everyone agrees on the necessity of English rugby, finally, adding up to more than the sum of its parts. “The great challenge around English rugby is the number of players,” continues O’Shea, keen to move away from the old hokey cokey school of Test selection. “If you’re going to get consistency and cohesiveness, at some stage you have to say: ‘Who are my best players?’ You can’t keep chopping and changing.”
And if assorted other challenges – “Covid, clubs going under, the stress that puts on everybody”– have made life “pretty difficult” O’Shea does not dispute the next six weeks are highly significant. “If it’s not done [by the end of March] it won’t stop us doing it … what we can’t have is one or two people derail something for the rest. But we want to get this done. Will it be perfect? It would be delusional to say that. There’s not a system in the world that is. But can we make our system miles better? Yes.”
