With little likelihood of crowds returning for at least another six months, Worcester’s owners issued a stark statement, Peter Toms, Leicester Tigers’ chairman, said he expected clubs would go out of business, Exeter chipped in, and Lance Bradley, Gloucester’s chief executive said that no fans for a further six months would be devastating.
Bradley had previously said Gloucester were in better shape than some of their rivals – they own their ground, and they have a decent level of support – so how bad must things be for some of the others?
As a huge fan of the Premiership, I struggle to imagine life without it, so I desperately hope a support package can be put together, but it needs to be on commercial terms. First, it has to be a loan and not a hand-out, because it’s our – the tax-payers’ – money that the government is doling out, and it needs to be on commercial terms. So any loan has to come with conditions.
The first of those is that there has to be a realistic expectation it will be paid back – it might take a while, and the interest rates might be very low or even zero, but eventually we need to get our money back.
This story is from the September 27, 2020 edition of The Rugby Paper.
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This story is from the September 27, 2020 edition of The Rugby Paper.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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