Time for club owners to come clean on plans

SEETHING financial undercurrents are undermining the main pillars of the game in England, with the professional club top tier increasingly in peril-mostly due to the consistent administrative failings which have led to a broken Premiership structure.

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The collapse of Wasps, London Irish and Worcester 18 months ago should have been a warning shot that neither PRL nor any Premiership club could ignore. However, there are signs that most clubs have not shelved their bad habits, despite a scathingly critical UK Parliament report in January 2023 when a DCMS rugby committee stated that the financial situation of the Premiership teams is "clearly unsustainable".

This week we were presented with a picture of a Premiership which appears to be stuck in a debt cycle, with nine of the 10 clubs posting losses in the 2023 financial year for a cumulative total of £23.5 million. At the same time their umbrella company, PRL, filed a loss of £23.6m, for overall losses in the elite English league of £47.1m.

All of this, just four years after receiving £200m from selling 27 percent of PRL to CVC. The only club yet to submit its accounts for 2023 is Newcastle, who are rooted to the foot of the table after 14 successive losses - and late submissions are rarely a good sign.

The picture is even more concerning when you take into account an estimated Premiership debt mountain of £300m, which was accumulated by the surviving 10 clubs prior to their 2023 losses.