English Premiership Rugby Union To Expand To 14 Clubs From 2022/23

London, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th Jun, 2021 ) :The English Premiership will expand to 14 clubs from the 2022/23 season, when relegation will be paused temporarily, in a move to help club rugby recover from the pandemic, officials announced Tuesday.

Saracens will rejoin the English top flight next term, having won the second-tier Championship after being relegated from the Premiership for salary cap breaches after the end of the 2019/20 season.

That will increase the number of Premiership clubs for the 2021/22 season from 12 to 13.

Now the governing council of England's Rugby Football Union's have voted to add another team for the following two seasons, with a play-off between the Premiership's bottom side and the winners of the Championship deciding which club is either relegated or promoted in 2023/24.

The changes have been made as part of the RFU's Covid Recovery Plan, designed to help the game in England bounce back from the effects of the pandemic.

Unless the council decides otherwise, from 2024/25 promotion will revert to the traditional one-up, one down, at the end of the season.

"The changes will undoubtedly benefit the game of rugby in England as we recover from the effects of the pandemic," RFU president Jeff Blackett said in a statement.

Concerns had been expressed that pausing relegation would lead to a ring-fencing of the Premiership, with clubs unable to follow the example of Exeter, this season's runners-up, who rose through the ranks to become a major force in English club rugby.

Blackett, however, insisted: "This is not ring-fencing the Premiership as some have suggested.

"In three of the four seasons covered by this and our previous decision, a Championship club will have the opportunity to be promoted.

"Council has control of what happens thereafter and is committed to maintaining the integrity of the league structure by ensuring that access to the Premiership will be retained in the future." A key of aim of the RFU plan is to "improve the financial stability and sustainability of professional rugby during the next three seasons".

Premiership expansion will be subject to promoted clubs meeting minimum standards, including ground facilities, which are set to be revised.

The hope in pausing relegation is that it will allow clubs to plan with greater certainty, while giving newly-promoted teams more of a chance to adapt to the demands of top-flight club rugby.

Meanwhile, the 2022/23 season will end in May -- the just-completed season only finished last weekend -- to give England more preparation time for the 2023 World Cup in France.

Nigel Melville, the chairman of the Premiership Rugby investor board and a former England captain, said the combination of measures would help clubs "reset and rebuild after the unprecedented financial pressures of Covid".