The Exeter Chiefs chair believes the sport is "on its knees" as clubs struggle to compete financially and the gulf between the Premiership and Championship grows ever wider, and thinks a move to franchising is "the way forward".
He told Telegraph Sport: “Franchising is the way forward for English rugby. We need it.
"English rugby is on its knees. Anyone who says it isn’t, is telling a lie. The RFU has to wake up and smell the coffee. It earns the majority of its funds from our assets – and we are losing money. They need to let us go to franchise and not interfere and then they’ll always have our assets to earn money from. If they don’t, I don’t know what the consequences will be, but they won’t be good...
"Relegation does not really help anyone. Before the franchise talk began, I believed in promotion and relegation. That’s where [Exeter] came from. You have to have an opportunity for someone to come up. I’m in favour of promotion without relegation; allowing clubs to invest and work hard to get themselves up into the top league."
With Exeter floundering in the Premiership, the chairman admitted he can see financial struggles if they get relegated.
He said: “Exeter are the lowest in the Premiership we’ve ever been. Ever. Including the first year we were in it. And, for the first time ever, I’ve experienced the problems of the threat of relegation hanging over you, which other clubs have reported before.
"I’ve had sponsors say to my salespeople, who have come back to me and said: ‘So-and-so is quite happy to do his sponsorship for next year but if we get relegated he wants to renegotiate.’ I can’t run a business like that. There’s an opportunity here with franchising for people to invest their money and for it to be secure.
“To do away with relegation has to be a positive for English rugby. If people making the decisions at Twickenham cannot see that the old-fashioned way is not the way to encourage investment... nobody is going to invest large sums of money into a Championship club with the risk of them being relegated back into that league after a year. It is not going to happen.”
