Premiership door remains open for Doncaster Knights

Knights finished runners-up to Ealing Trailfinders in last season’s Championship but Ealing missed out on promotion after failing to meet minimum standards criteria.

Relegation from the Premiership has been temporarily paused as a financial safeguard for clubs due to the coronavirus pandemic.

But Premiership bosses have confirmed that their plan to expand the league to 14 teams after next season remains in place – meaning Knights will definitely have another shot at promotion next season.

Promotion and relegation will then resume from the 2023/24 season in the form of a play-off between the Premiership’s bottom side and the Championship winners.

Knights and Eailing both applied for promotion last season but failed the Premiership audit because their grounds do not hold more than 10,000 spectators.

Ealing subsequently withdrew an appeal against the decision as the RFU vowed to "review standards relating to minimum capacity" before next season's audit process.

Premiership Rugby’s chief executive Simon Massie-Taylor said: “The intention was that we were moving to a 14-team league so it was disappointing that Ealing didn't pass the standards and come up.

“The expectation is that there'll be promotion next season then the agreement is promotion, and relegation after that. That was what was agreed by the RFU council.

“It is still the intention to have relegation going forward after this moratorium that was really important from a Covid recovery perspective.

"It was the right decision in order to preserve the 13 clubs that have existed within the Premiership. It's a miracle that they've survived after what has gone on over the last few years.”

RFU chief executive Bill Sweeney indicated in March they would be prepared to relax the ground criteria for promotion to the Premiership in time for the 2023-24 season.

“One of the things that we said about this process now is that we are happy to look at the minimum criteria, and that PRL (Premiership Rugby) will be supportive, so if the general view is that we take it down to 5,000 we can make representations to the DCMS in December 2022 and it can be changed by February 2023,” said Sweeney.

"I am not saying that is agreed yet, I'm saying they have agreed to re-look at it and see if they can reduce it down.

"We would love to have a Doncaster, Yorkshire-based Premiership club, we would love to have a Cornish Pirates. Ealing have done a fantastic job.”

The newly-introduced play-off from 2024 will at least keep the door open to the top flight for Championship clubs.

However, cynics would argue the system is heavily weighted in favour of the side finishing bottom of the Premiership because their central funding and player budget will far exceed that of any prospective opponent from the Championship.

How Doncaster Knights and rugby fans responded to RFU's ruling to block promotion