Newcastle Falcons are at the bottom of the Premier League but can rest easy knowing they will avoid relegation. Photo: Getty Images/Stu Forster
At the end of the domestic season, barring some late drama that even unpredictable France will struggle with, Brive will be promoted to the second division of French rugby, Pro D2, after four straight seasons in the Top 14.
This season has been one of strife for Brive. Despite having received significant investment from Ian Osborne, the English billionaire, the team has entrenched themselves at the bottom of the top 14 table, winning just six of their 23 matches. In October last year, the head coach of the club, former lion Jeremy Davidson, was also relieved of his duties.
Brive has never finished higher than eighth in the Top 14 in the last 10 seasons. , There have been two promotions from Pro D2 in this period, the last place, and another one is sure to follow this year — the season at 12th and two at 11th.
Every year, Brive finds itself in an air fight for relegation. And yet, in this city of 50,000, the average attendance at the Amédée-Domenech Stadium last season was just under 10,000. Nearly a fifth of the city's population regularly goes to see the rugby team, despite the fact that they invariably lose.
As Simon Gillham, the English president of the Brive, will protest, one of the main reasons is the threat of relegation that comes with competition, danger and drama. Rugby and sports become theatre, and without an amphitheater to speak of, and Brive's chances of winning silver are slim at best, the struggle for survival is almost as close as the brivistas to Roman gladiator spectacles.
< p>Turkeys voting for Christmas come to mind. But Gillham and Brive are wise enough to see the bigger picture: an extra draw in the league — and at their club — in the presence of relegation. It's simply not possible for Brive's average attendance to get close to 10,000 if it wasn't for the stories and stimulation that spilled out of the league into the whirlpool of the hatch. 
Brive are regular candidates for relegation, but that doesn't mean fans don't want to see them play. Photo: AFP/Diarmid Courreges
Scenarios such as the Premier League final round this weekend, where there is little to do with multiple outcomes, will require an extraordinary set of circumstances to reflect in France. The same could be said sometime in the English game. Instead, we had to suffer the blandness of the last few rounds, with the exception of the visit of the London Irish to the Saracens, who were desperately lacking in intrigue and enthusiasm. By abolishing automatic relegation forever — it is clear that in the future English rugby fans will come to play-off relegation — and by fencing the league, the Premier League has failed to realize that the concept it fears the most is actually the one it really hates. enough.
Gillham's view of attendance can be extrapolated to the English Channel. Newcastle were thrashed 66-5 at Kingston Park in the previous Premier League round under Friday night lights. Attendance was 6847 people. In the year the Falcons were last relegated in 2019, they faced a quasi-relegation decider in the same month of the year against Leicester on Friday night. Attendance that evening was 8,292, leaving just 2,000 people short of space. When you take into account the fact that Newcastle have two of the league's brightest players, Adam Radwan and Mateo Carreras, the relegation evidence stacks even more in favor of relegation.
The Premier League in its current form is a sick league. The original justification for the introduction of the fence was to allow Premier League clubs to clean up their financial affairs. It has clearly worked wonders, with only two clubs this season immersed in administrative matters, and another, London Irish, confirmed on Tuesday that it had not paid its staff salaries for April.
The London Irish's failure to pay wages in April is another illustration that the top division fencing was not a runaway success. Photo: Getty Images/David Rogers
Thus, if the advent of ring fencing did little to stabilize clubs' finance, what's the point? Of course, moving from the Premier League to the Championship comes with a significant financial burden for any club, but the bigger picture is that the entire English domestic rugby landscape is improving — both financially and culturally — with dangers at the bottom. tables.
The only anomaly between Brive's situation and any other Premier League team that could be relegated is that the French second tier are much stronger than their English equivalent. Brive will descend into a competitive, popular league full of tribalism, fanaticism and, most importantly, professionalism. It would be somewhat pointless if the Premier League pulled the rabbit out of the hat and announced a return to the big leagues and relegation, but now the wheels need to be started for the future of professional rugby in England.
Most of the cash-strapped championship clubs have been would be eaten alive in the top division, but the Rugby Football Union must begin to recognize the value of streamlining the two leagues rather than seeing their respective values as separate units. While the Premier League has its own governing body, the leagues need to be judged as a package; more funding for Nottingham, for example, will improve the second tier, making both leagues more competitive, increasing their popularity, raising their standards and raising the level of the average English player.
Under normal circumstances, fans, media and clubs will prepare for premier league round like no other, and all matches will start in unison. Instead, the only attraction for neutral players is whether Bristol or Bath can finish eighth in the table and with it a place in the Champions Cup. How much does a flight to Brive cost?
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