Amid the onrushing tide of worrying world news stories, the outcome of a 123-person vote in Truro’s county hall might seem relatively trivial. If you live in Cornwall or have the faintest interest in the growth of professional club rugby union, however, Tuesday is as defining a moment as any in the county’s sporting history.
No pressure on Cornwall’s councillors but the decision on whether or not to approve council funding for the proposed new Stadium for Cornwall goes way beyond sport. If you had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to boost your local region’s economy, offer hope to those young athletes not destined to become world-class surfers or sailors and create a lasting community legacy, would you grasp it? Or would you take the view that public money allocated for development is better spent on something other than a shiny ballpark which may never host sustainable top‑tier football or rugby?
Not all those voting are sports fans and political pressures also mean the vote could still go either way. The positive argument runs as follows: the council says ‘Yes’ and approves £3m of funding towards the stadium project, which it remains confident the government will match. This would remove the funding logjam that has delayed the much-debated £14.3m project for years.
An initial 6,000-capacity complex with a 4G artificial pitch would be in use for 365 days a year, shared by Cornish Pirates, Truro City FC and Truro and Penwith College. There would also be a health club and Cornwall’s biggest conference facility attached, all on a site with excellent transport links to the rest of the far south-west.
Crucially, the money is not being diverted from stretched social care budgets or pothole-repair funds. It is ring-fenced development cash which, by law, cannot be used for anything other than the economic regeneration of one of the country’s poorer regions. Among previous beneficiaries of such funds have been the Eden Project, Tate St Ives and Newquay airport, all with the aim of convincing people it is no longer necessary to pass the Duchy on the left-hand side en route to somewhere better.
The timing, from English rugby’s perspective, could hardly be more significant. On Thursday the Professional Game Board is scheduled to meet to discuss, among other things, the ongoing future of promotion and relegation to and from the Premiership. No one is suggesting the Pirates would thrive in the Premiership right now but imagine that potential avenue being forever closed. What price then a brave new world for the athletic sons and daughters of ancient Kernow?
Perhaps the best person to consult on this cat’s cradle of related issues is Mark Evans, the former Saracens and Harlequins chief executive who has been assisting the bid. Like everyone else, Evans is unsure which way the Truro vote will go but is convinced a ‘No’ will kill stone dead any chance of professional club rugby taking root in the rugby-mad far-west.
“If it doesn’t happen this time it’ll never happen unless a billionaire comes out of nowhere. The Pirates will go back to being a level 2 or 3 side with very little aspiration, and another heartland goes.”
Evans has been saying for two decades that club rugby’s rulers should be more concerned with growing the sport than chasing profit. Ending automatic promotion and relegation, he believes, is a small part of a much bigger picture. “The current model is bust, in my view. It’s not growing the game significantly, it’s not profitable for the investors, television figures for club rugby are not growing significantly [and] attendances are only growing largely through the marquee games.
“Are we prepared to say the English league will always be propped up by extremely wealthy people? If all the revenue goes out of the changing room door, the game doesn’t grow. All that money could go into marketing the game or improving facilities. Some club ticket prices are getting ridiculous. We’ve got too many games which leads to too many injuries, which leads to oversized squads, which leads to a Championship that is totally dysfunctional. What we are doing to our second tier is nothing short of shameful. All the game has done is ridden the wave of higher and higher media rights. To which I would say a rising tide floats all boats.”
Evans points to Australian rules football, which has invested hugely in places previously without an elite AFL club, and thinks rugby should follow suit – how about a Brighton-based side, for example? – if the numbers stack up. “I want the game to be bigger via a managed-growth model, with a closed league and a percentage of central television money syphoned off to build up new markets. Premiership Rugby can’t have it both ways. They can’t say we want to be independent and control our own destiny and not have a growth strategy. I defy anybody to stand up and say: ‘This is working.’”
Which is why the decision this week in Truro resonates far beyond Penzance, Redruth, Camborne and every other Cornish rugby town. Here’s hoping that Hellfire Stadium, Stack Stevens Park or the Vickery Arena receives its green light, even in these uncertain economic times. Build it, to borrow from Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, and they will surely come.
Try again
Here are just a few of the fine, prolific wingers who have played club rugby in France this century: Bryan Habana, Joe Rokocoko, Nemani Nadalo, Drew Mitchell, Juan Imhoff, Sitiveni Sivivatu, Vincent Clerc, Cedric Heymans, Christophe Dominici, Emile Ntamack. It is some achievement, therefore, for Chris Ashton to have broken the record for individual tries scored in the competition, eclipsing the previous mark of 21 by Clermont’s Napolioni Nalaga. Ashton, 31, has also been required to play 10 games at full-back and 11 on the wing; as his coach Fabien Galthie wryly observed: ‘He has been a good find, eh?’ At this rate Eddie Jones will be tempted to dust down the ‘exceptional-circumstances clause’ relating to the availability of English-qualified players based overseas.
One to watch
The Champions Cup semi-finals. Welcome to the Pro 14’s finest hour, with three sides in the last four and an all-Irish final in Bilbao next month if Leinster can beat Scarlets in Dublin and Munster defeat Racing 92 in Bordeaux. Those who fancy Racing and the retiring Dan Carter to progress are forgetting the last time the Irish province featured in a semi-final at Bordeaux’s Stade Chaban-Delmas in 2000. Munster beat Toulouse 31-25 in a game so gripping it still ranks among the greatest European knock-out games. Could we be in for a vintage re-run?
