Side-step or U-turn? Turmoil with the Adult Competition Review

Concerted pressure has seen partial reversal on damaging league reductions and a restoring of automatic promotion for some, but the health of the club game is still at risk…

The RFU’s Adult Competition Review (ACR) report recommendations are in tactical retreat. The group’s proposals to apply a massive structural overhaul to the league structure of English rugby union, in opposition to the opinions of players and clubs which they themselves surveyed and reported on, has been under fire from the moment the report was made public in March.

At that time, they had hoped to steam-roll through a previously unseen and unapproved solution in the following RFU council meeting, only to have their plans delayed as the full impacts of the scheme began to emerge and two further months of consultation and reflection were required.

Now yet again, with less than a month left before the new voting deadline and in the face of growing and better informed opposition, the ACR committee have shifted the goal posts yet again and changed their proposed format for National 1 and National 2 in order to secure council acceptance.

So what’s changed?

The key changes to their proposals are as follows:

1) Level 3 (National League 1) to contain 15 teams with no cup competition.
The previous plan was for a 14-team league with no cup, so the fixture damage has been halved. Strangely, they state that the maximum games any team should play should be capped to 30 yet only give National 1 sides 28 games.

2) Level 3 shall have 3 relegation berths.
This had been cut to 2 to reflect the smaller 14-team league size, but in doing so resulted in the scrapping of automatic promotion at the level below. This concession return things to the current situation, and the single promotion spot to the Championship remains unchanged also.

3) Level 4 (National Leagues 2 North & South) to contain 3 leagues of 15 teams.
This is the single biggest climb-down in the report changes. The ACR had previously aimed for 4 leagues of 12 teams as a result of pursuing their agenda to slash games played and travel costs: an agenda that #SaveRugby have privately and conservatively calculated would have costed NCA clubs around £270,000 in lost gate and season ticket sales alone, and estimated an even greater impact on sponsorship deals too.

4) No cup competition for Level 4
A change associated with point 3, it represents a tacit admission that cup games would produce less crowds and lower financial returns than league fixtures whilst eroding the gains made in travel reduction and throwing off-field hospitality efforts into uncertainty too. The prize money offered to Level 5 clubs for their cup efforts (see below) would simply not offset the damage done for many clubs.

5) Automatic promotion from Level 4 to Level 3 is maintained
Possibly a major driver in the u-turn on league sizes at both levels, the elimination of automatic promotion in the previous report recommendations was always massively at odds with every finding of every survey associated with the report. With 1 promotion slot per league automatic promotion has been restored, but with 3 teams from 45 (6.6%) heading to National 1 each year it still represents the biggest bottleneck in the whole league structure. 8 teams would be relegated to Level 5 each year still, as per the original plan.

6) Optional national cup competition for Level 6.
A slight change from the compulsory cup competition previously envisaged, plus no apparent option for Level 7 clubs to participate as well unlike the previous ACR plan.

7) Change to the report’s key principles
The ACR press release states it has “evolved its thinking on the recommendations within the context of the key principles identified from the research and consultation”. However it apparently has also “evolved” the key principles too, since two of them from the original report have been dropped. An acceptable minimum number of home games and increasing the number of derby fixtures have both been dropped as key principles: the latter since their plans failed to generate more true derbies and the impact of them was overstated; the former since the number of home fixtures has never proven to be “acceptable” for the clubs involved!

Celebrations or smokescreens?

For the clubs that have lobbied hardest in the aftermath of the publishing of the ACR report – the 48 members of the National Clubs Association (NCA) who represent Levels 3 and 4 – the latest changes are a partial victory and an embarrassing retreat for John Douglas and his fellow committee members who originally tried to simply ignore and marginalise their consultations with this group. Indeed, the tone of the press release is quite bitter, almost verging on contemptuous towards club administrators who selflessly volunteer to support rugby in their areas.

However, they have yet again concocted another league system from nowhere and aim to put it to RFU Council without any consultation on it at all, and all the problems at Level 5 and below still persist. It’s a league structure that will still inflict less rugby on the 87% of players who don’t want less rugby. A league structure that will still see a massive dilution of playing standards at lower levels so that staying put will be equivalent to relegation. A league structure that will cause stagnation of the club game through a massive reduction in promotion and relegation.

Wedded to their agenda for change no matter the evidence, the ACR board have yet again created a new league structure without proving with real data how well it will actually deliver the goal of lower travel, leading to many concerns from Midlands clubs unused to the new prospect of trips to deepest darkest Cornwall which the reshuffle now creates. If the figures supported a tangible overall drop in travel across the board, then why not publish it? Otherwise it becomes change for change’s sake in order to save face, which the reduced culling of league size is also tantamount to.

Additionally, the relative silence from lower league clubs shouldn’t be taken as a default acceptance of the new structures. Instead it should be recognised that without a united governing body standing up for their interests and an effective online forum for the spread of considered information, with the NCA clubs have both of, most lower league clubs are still not fully aware of the impact of the changes at their level.

An Uncertain Future

But worst of all, we are now three and a half months away from the start of a new season without having any idea what the result of that new season will bring. Will there still relegation in the face of such massive levels of promotion? If not, will many clubs be facing a season of endless dead rubbers? If so, is it fair for Level 5 clubs to end up in a league two-thirds full of Level 7 clubs?

With no details whatsoever on the table regarding the proposed transition from the current structure to any new one set to be imposed, rugby clubs across the country face a very uncertain summer indeed…

First or Last, but Never During the Six Nations!

We take a closer look than the RFU at what drives attendances, find a few extra details, and ask just what makes a “derby” game?

One of the central arguments made in the RFU’s Adult Competition Review recommendations for a new, more regionalised league structure is, in the words of the report:

It also creates a greater number of derby matches at the higher levels of the game, which will support revenue generation.

Hard to argue with that, unless you ask the question of…

What constitutes a derby game?

Well, it certainly isn’t your nearest neighbour in the league, as Stourbridge will remember when Redruth became their Christmas “derby” fixture one year by virtue of being the nearest neighbour to the Cornish club in National 1, despite the separation of around 250 miles!

Appendix 17 of the Adult Competition Review (ACR) report deals with the tricky task of relating match day attendances with league positions and travelling times, and seems to suggest a rough idea of teams within an hour’s travel time of each other can be considered derbies.

After analysing attendances across the NCA clubs for last season (a fairly small data set), it surmises that the three strongest drivers of high attendance are (in order of importance) Geographical Proximity, Strong Opposition and Strong Opposition Attendances.

Conversely, weak attendance was driven by (in order of importance) Poor Opposition, Geographical Separation and Poor Opposition Attendances.

It did this by looking firstly at the circumstances relating to a club’s highest/lowest home attendance, and then those games where attendances were 30% higher/lower than the club average.

However, these were the ONLY factors reviewed, since other considerations were deemed “too time-consuming” or “impossible to assess”.

Well, after a quick morning’s browse around Statbunker’s National 1 data we’ve come up with some extra details… and the biggest flaw in the analysis.

London Vs The Rest

The rest of this piece will deal with data from National 1 only, although much of the conclusions are applicable elsewhere. The data comes from Statbunker, or from club websites where holes exist in the attendance data. Note that Old Albanians’ home games are not included here, due to the suspicious nature of their reporting (attendances: 340,380,320,320,310,320,340,310… you get the picture…) The later analysis of first games omits Tynedale due to lack of an attendance figure; similarly Cinderford aren’t included for the last game analysis, but only 9 games had no attendance recorded.

The first thing to note is that a majority of the instances of 30% over-average and under-average instances come from the 5 London clubs: Ealing, Rosslyn Park, Esher, Blackheath and Richmond. 18 of the 34 thirty-over-average games happened in London (15 of these were London derbies, whilst only 5 of the remaining 16 being “derbies”), whilst 18 of the 27 thirty-under-average games happened in the capital as well.

Why?

London derbies show a massive average 70% uplift in attendance compared to home games in the capital against other teams. Only the Blaydon-Tynedale fixture was in the same ballpark, although Sedgley Park-Macclesfield was close.

So given that each London side had 4 home derbies, the rest of the attendances start looking very small indeed by comparison. Richmond alone had 7 thirty-under-average games.

So with the rest of the league creating less instances of interest to the review panel’s analysis, their experiences are relatively under-represented, especially when you consider that 7 of the other 16 thirty-over-average games saw London clubs as the opposition (all 5 clubs feature in those 7 games, so it’s not because of a particularly strong or popular opponent). So more decent gates outside of London were created by the arrival of London clubs than by derby rivals!

Rivalry, not Proximity

The best example of this is Coventry. Their biggest gate of the season was against Richmond, and at a whopping 1166 that made it the second biggest game in the league all year, beating all the London derbies save for Richmond-Rosslyn Park. More than any other game this sticks out like a sore thumb, but the analysis chose not to investigate.

If they had done so, they might have realised that this was a long-overdue meeting between two old rivals, a historic reuniting of two clubs with more history than you can shake a stick at.

Derbies drive attendance when there is a sense of rivalry. The closer two teams are then more likely that rivalry will be higher, but it’s far from guaranteed. Rivalry is just as likely to be spawned through the history of competition between two sides, fuelled by close scorelines, old feuds, perceived injustices, different demographics, anything that gives a fan that sense of belonging to one tribe over the other.

Coventry vs Richmond wasn’t just two sides playing rugby: it was a rivalry rekindled. A clash of strong identities. A derby without rivalry is just another game, albeit one that might be a bit easier to get to, but people will still only make the effort if there’s nothing better to do. Rivalry fuels interest, which in turn fuels participation.

Londoners already have a certain sense of identity created by the area of London in which they live and/or associate themselves with, perhaps resulting in the bigger general impact of current derby fixtures there, and if so then greater numbers of London derbies will likely create similar levels of rivalry. Outside of London, more “derbies” will only drive significant increases in attendance automatically where there are clashes of already strong local identities. Ironically, greater regionalisation which is supposed to help the rest of the country more may in fact tilt the financial balance even further towards the south-east, especially when it comes to the dreaded play-offs at level 4…

First Thing’s First

When it came to top attendances, there was one clear phenomenon which the RFU neglected which shone through clear as day.

The first and last home games of the season saw a massive boost.

On average, the first home game saw an extra 27% attendance. However, due to the way that the second week of fixtures sees “derby” games played, 4 of the 14 games were derbies, but the remainder still saw an 11% uplift on average anyway. Additionally, the highest attendance for an opening home game was not a London derby either, it was Coventry v Ealing.

10 of the 14 clubs saw a top 3 attendance in the first game (1st x 2, 2nd x 2, 3rd x 6).

Richmond’s first game ranked 5th for them, but was their top non-London fixture. Wharfedale ranked 5th too, but only 7% of a 3rd spot.

Blackheath’s home opener ranked 7th, but their thunder had been stolen already: this was their 3rd game having already played a London derby against Esher, who doubtless benefited from the first-game boost of their rivals instead!

Even Loughborough’s 12th is explainable, given that the game fell before the start of the new academic year!

So why is the first game so important?

The whole summer has built up to it. New signings, pre-season games and that heady mix of summer and hope all adds up to extra anticipation. Extra interest. More reasons to not do something else, but to revel in the long-overdue resumption of competition.

The Last Laugh

So what about the final games?

The last home games were 24% higher than the season average.

5 teams had their highest gate on the final home game. 10 out of 14 had a top 5 attendance for the season.

The only four exceptions all had the same main reason: finally falling off the pace. Blaydon and Rosslyn Park had been challenging all year, but with title hopes gone their final dead-rubber gates slumped to their 8th and 9th best respectively. Cambridge’s 9th highest gate reflected their having been cut adrift into relegation long before, whilst Sedgley Park combined that with playing inside the County Championship season to record their lowest attendance.

Conversely, the fight to beat the drop drove season-high attendances at Macclesfield, Wharfedale and Tynedale; the latter even exceeding the gate for the North-East derby when Wharfedale visited.

Nothing builds interest like a good promotion battle or relegation dog-fight, and it takes interest to convince people that what they want to spend their precious Saturdays doing is watching rugby instead of all the other myriad entertainments on offer in the 21st century.

But even where stakes were lower and the drama less intense, clubs enjoyed a decent gate to finish the campaign, driven by better weather and a final chance to enjoy some rugby before the summer sports rolled into town.

International Rugby: The Ultimate Gate-Killer

Now for where the analysis’s refusal to take time of match into account really falls down.

The report notes the concerns of clubs over the scheduling of international matches, but how much of a problem really is it?

Fixtures played during the Six Nations saw 23% lower attendance than the season average.

Attendances also fell during the Autumn International period, but quite not as badly.

Nevertheless, 12 out of 15 clubs reported their lowest gate of the season during either the Six Nations (9 clubs) or Autumn Internationals (3 clubs).

As for the exception, Tynedale’s match against Cambridge missed out on lowest status by only 4 people. Loughborough’s lowest was their Christmas fixture when the students had all gone home again, whilst we’ve already noted why Sedgley Park’s final game was such a non-event.

Such is the awareness of the impact of international rugby that Rosslyn Park chose to schedule their game against Esher on a Friday night to circumvent the international games the next day… and secured 1102 people for their troubles.

Ealing failed to do similarly later in the season during the Six Nations, which is why their derby games against Blackheath and Richmond saw below-average crowds, costing them a probable extra 500-600 people at each game and a five-figure relative financial loss. More people watched them play against the likes of Fylde, Cinderford and far-away Blaydon than watched those two London derbies! Interest and rivalry can easily be trumped by greater sources of the same…

To put it into the same context as the report appendix, 13 of the 27 thirty-under-average games occurred during international rugby windows.

That makes international rugby the biggest driver of low attendances of all, trumping opposition quality and geography.

Attendances are just one aspect of revenue generation for clubs, so to link this topic with a wider appraisal of the likely economic impacts of the ACR on club sustainability you’ll have to wait for next week…

Image: dazjohnson @ Flickr CC-by

The Death of Automatic Promotion, and Why 4 is the Magic Number

English rugby union’s Level 4 is the epicentre of the RFU Adult Competition Review’s proposed league structure changes where the two current leagues of National 2 North and South are to be split into 4, and in doing so they propose to remove the principle of automatic promotion by sharing 2 promotion slots between the 4 leagues.

That’s right: you heard it – NO MORE AUTOMATIC PROMOTION.

Just 2 teams from 4 different leagues!

This goes against the overwhelming weight of opinion, with 95% of clubs surveyed backing automatic promotion and, although the phrasing of the question in the player survey was more vague, 90% of players backing promotion too (Both surveys make up appendices of the report).

However, given how we’ve already discussed how the Adult Competition Review (ACR) is giving players less games despite 87% of players being against this, and slashing promotion and relegation levels throughout the leagues by 28% despite 87% of clubs being happy with the current league structure, it should hardly be surprising that the review panel decided to ignore yet another clear and unambiguous vote of approval for another core part of the game.

The amount of promotion will drop from 9% to a minuscule 4%. Not quite ringfencing… but not far off, as 48 teams fight it out for those 2 places.

So with the RFU set to prevent automatic promotion from National 2 to National 1, plus , what will that generally mean for the clubs involved?

Let’s take a look at the historical league tables to find out…

4 (Points Per Game) Was The Magic Number

With different seasons having different numbers of teams, rather than look at total points as a guide to what a team has historically needed for promotion or the runner-up play-off spot we’ll examine points per game (ppg) instead.

Because of this, we’ll also only look back so far as 2004/05, when bonus points were introduced. By averaging the points per game for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd spots in the leagues we get:

Average Points per Game (ppg) versus league position
Level 4 league	North	South	Both
1st	4.21	4.3	4.25
2nd	3.7	3.99	3.84
3rd	3.45	3.63	3.54

 

Since bonus points, no team has ever won National 2 South with less than 4ppg. Only three times has National 2 North been won by less, and even then the lowest winning champion was Blaydon on 3.88ppg.

By any standards, accumulating 4ppg or above during the course of a season is a fantastic achievement, and only in 2009/10 was this not enough to finish in the top two positions, with both Ealing and Caldy making history on that occasion.

Yet 4ppg is often not enough for the title. 8 out of 18 times the side finishing second has acquired more than 4ppg, with 3 of those sides failing to then win their home play-off game – North Walsham in 04/05, Loughborough Students in 09/10 and (perhaps most traumatically, given their whopping 4.4ppg which has only been exceeded 3 times) Stourbridge in 12/13.

To prove that play-off victors aren’t simple fodder for the league above, teams still currently competing in the Championship & National 1 after advancing via the play-offs include Jersey, Rosslyn Park, Cinderford and Richmond. These teams would, under the proposed system, have had to wait in turn even longer for promotion, or maybe never have made it at all.

Not Enough

So out of the 25 sides who finished on 4ppg or above, 20 went on to compete at level 3.

Under the proposed system, Stourbridge’s nightmare of last year will become more the norm than the exception.

In the past 9 seasons, two teams with 4ppg have met in the play-offs only twice.

In future seasons, if the ACR report recommendations are accepted by RFU council, the number of teams who have truly exceptional seasons – and end up worthy champions of their league as a result – who then fail to win promotion will skyrocket. Teams that lose only one or two games all season will see it come to nought year in, year out.

A massive disincentive to compete. To invest. To watch.

Which along with the dilution of standards, making it more like level 4.3 than level 4, will also damage one of the only things that the RFU actually cares about from the “community  game”: the growth in skills and experience that Academy players – Twickenham’s precious future England stars – achieve when playing at this level.

There is no appetite for the kind of changes being proposed outside of English rugby’s HQ – not amongst players, clubs, fans or volunteers.

The knock-on effects of the “pyramid flattening” will be felt in terms of standards dilution, fewer fringe player opportunities and league stagnation all the way down the pyramid.

A massive price to pay in the hope of a bit of extra Sport England funding for Twickenham.

Attention All Players!

More time to #SaveRugby?

Rumours are indicating that the RFU Council vote on the Adult Competition Review’s proposed new league structures have been delayed from 11th April to the June gathering.

Hopefully more time for delegates to get their heads around the full ramifications of the changes. Of course, #SaveRugby will continue to delve into the fine details in the interim…

Image: brianjmatis @ Flickr CC-by-nd-sa

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