More money needs to go to the grassroots

AS THE Premiership, Champions Cup and Women’s Six Nations hog the headlines, the crisis of the Championship and grassroots game seems to have been forgotten.

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Despite the knowledge that without a healthy and vibrant game below the top elite, the game will struggle to survive and England will find it increasingly difficult to compete with the other top tier nations.

Since the dawn of the leagues, grassroots clubs have struggled to retain both players and fixtures below their first and second team level. This was in part due to the ambition of clubs trying to climb the league and gain the extra money that was promised to them by the Union. With the promise of incremental funding for each promotion of the league structure failing to materialise, it impacted on clubs finances with the loss of players from their lower teams as a result.

The focus on the first teams often drained club finances making it hard to fund away games for the lower sides, even with some travel expense money from the Union.

The thing is, as I have said many times before, rugby is a habit game which must be played week on week when the season starts. If there are too many breaks in the lower teams because of cancelled games, players will find other things to do and be more inclined to only want to take part in home or local games.

This to a certain extent is why the new Papa John’s Community Cup competition that the RFU thought would be welcomed by the grassroots clubs has failed to ignite the levels of support and enthusiasm that was hoped for.