'Are you completely unhinged?': Ex-Quins CEO fires up Prem debate

Wednesday’s revelation that Worcester are facing a winding-up petition from HMRC due to an unpaid tax bill ignited a lively Twitter debate featuring Mark Evans, the former Harlequins CEO who coached at Saracens and Quins after the Premiership turned pro in England.

The Warriors have become the second club in recent weeks to create anxiety about their finances heading into the 2022/23 Gallagher Premiership season, following on from the admission by Wasps that they have been unable to honour a £35million bondholder debt that was due to be repaid this summer.

Debating the emergence of the story regarding the financial situation at Worcester, @spkeene, a passionate poster about rugby on Twitter, suggested: “It strengthens the case for a robust system of promotion and relegation so that there is always another club ready to step up. Insolvencies are inevitable in the wider sense, will always happen somewhere and sometime whatever system you use.”

It was at this point that Evans, the seasoned Premiership rugby coach and administrator who went on to work in NRL, joined the online discussion. “Complete nonsense. Economically illiterate from someone who talks a lot of sense in many other rugby areas,” he initially tweeted before elaborating further on his view with a series of follow-on posts that included dismay at the suggestion Ealing would be promoted into the Premiership.

“Get in Ealing - What, with their enormous fan base and close proximity with three established Premiership teams? Are you completely unhinged?

“Name me the last insolvency in the NRL, AFL, NBA, NFL etc. They are far from inevitable unless your model is sub-optimal... What exactly are the ‘inherent dangers’ of a closed league? Look at any number of them… Teams in well-run closed leagues don’t tend to ‘cellar dwell’ for too long (even the Jacksonville Jaguars have made the playoffs unlike Worcester Warriors).

“You conveniently completely ignore the growth of closed leagues. MLS from 12 to 32. NFL from 16 to 32. AFL from 12 to 18 etc. Not exactly a zero-sum game is it?

“Teams in closed leagues rarely collapse and have to start again (can’t think of any in the last 20 years in a variety of countries) whereas I offer up London Scottish, Richmond, Wakefield, London Welsh, Orrell, Leeds and now possibly Wasps and Worcester from a small sport in England.”