Rob Baxter slams decision to stop Ealing from entering the Premiership

Exeter boss Rob Baxter blasts ‘unfair’ rules blocking Ealing Trailfinders’ promotion despite them winning the Championship – as he accuses Bath of having changing rooms that aren’t ‘fit for purpose’

  • Ealing won the Championship but won’t be playing in the top-flight next year
  • They won’t be allowed to enter the Premiership due to the size of their stadium
  • Exeter boss Rob Baxter believes the current entry requirements are ‘unfair’
  • He feels some Premiership clubs are getting away with below-par facilities 

Rob Baxter has described the process for gaining entry to the Premiership as ‘unfair’, as Ealing Trailfinders await the outcome of their appeal – after winning the Championship but being denied promotion.

Exeter’s director of rugby is familiar with the complex, expensive task of satisfying all the Minimum Standards Criteria to join English rugby’s elite. The Devon club are regarded as a beacon of upward mobility, having come up in 2010 and gone on to win the Premiership title and conquer Europe.

Ealing finished top of the second-tier league last Saturday, a month after discovering that they had not met the MSC requirements – notably by not having a ground which can hold at least 10,001, as required. The RFU have suggested that the capacity threshold could be halved next season, but Trailfinders hope to successfully over-turn the decision to bar their promotion.

Exeter boss Rob Baxter is unhappy with the criteria for gaining entry to the Premiership

Baxter has some sympathy for their predicament, partly due to an imbalance in the system between newcomers and established teams. But he also argues that the west London club have long known about the guidelines and should not just be brought into an expanded Premiership automatically.

‘One hundred per cent there should be promotion and relegation,’ said Baxter. ‘Whether the minimum criteria are correct, I’m not sure. The bit that does irk me a bit is that there are elements of it that if you are in the Premiership, you don’t have to have in place.

‘That still niggles me and it niggled me when we came up. We were having to tick all the boxes. We had to start borrowing money to build additional ground capacity. We were spending money on things like wider doors on our medical room. When we built Sandy Park, we had to put certain-sized toilets in the changing-rooms. That was to allow us to tick boxes if we ever got to go up.

Ealing Trailfinders will not be entering the Premiership due to the size of their ground

‘I want there to be promotion and relegation because we had the opportunity to do it, but at the same time, we had the opportunity based on having to meet certain criteria. So for me to say Ealing should just come up, well… Should they just come up, as we had to jump through a lot of hoops?’

The case against the MSC system is that there is one rule for those on the inside and another for those on the outside. 

Baxter added: ‘It’s ridiculous how many hoops we had to jump through. Then you go to Bath and sit in changing-rooms that have not been fit for purpose since day one of the Premiership. They don’t have to re-adjust them – they just have to pay the fine every year.

‘Ealing would not be allowed to be promoted with that size changing-room and that’s frustrating – like the minimum crowds stuff. We all know, we go to games regularly, where crowds are not meeting the minimum Ealing would have to put in place to be in the Premiership. 

Baxter feels established Premiership clubs are getting away with sub-par facilities

‘I can understand and I agree with the argument about why those things seem unfair, but they have always been unfair and it hasn’t stopped promotion and relegation before. 

‘We got up, Newcastle and Worcester have been up and down, and Bristol have come up too. Ealing have known since they have been in the Championship what the criteria have been.

‘It is a tough one for me. I know we probably wouldn’t have stayed in the Premiership without the stuff we had put in place; without the ability to get on top of corporate, getting crowds in and the ability to look after players well. 

‘We certainly wouldn’t have been able to create the finances to stay in the Premiership. So I see both sides of the argument.’




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