The Champ, The Prem, and the future of English club rugby
The Ruck
Reynolds Alfie
3.4 • 566 Ratings
🗓️ 30 September 2025
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Promotion and relegation, franchising and the rugby pyramid; these are all issues that are so fundamental to the state of English rugby, and things so few people agree on.
So, to tackle these meaty topics Will and Alex go to Twickenham to meet Simon Gillham, the chair of the new Tier 2 board, and vice-president of French Pro D2 side Brive.
Can the Champ, which relaunches this weekend, and the Prem finally get on, coexist and thrive together?
How could promotion to the top flight work? Will London Irish return like Worcester Warriors have?
And Will there be an end to "self-interest" on all sides? We discuss it all, and rattle through the news from the opening round of the Prem, plus the finale of The Rugby Championship.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the Ruck, the journalist's rugby podcast from The Times and the Sunday Times. |
| 0:19.5 | Will here, as Alfie's taking a well-earned |
| 0:21.1 | rest after basically running every pod for the last, what, season and a half or something, Alex? Yeah, he's a workaholic that boy. Machine. Alex Lowe's with me. Enjoyed your weekend at Twickenham? Yes, well, I'm back. I've actually been at Twickenham three days out of the last four. Workhorse. World Cup final on Saturday was wonderful and we did a whole pod on that from the gates of Twickenham on Saturday night. |
| 0:44.3 | And then I was back here yesterday for sort of world rugby chat. |
| 0:49.3 | I guess they have review of the tournament and all the records that were broken, |
| 0:54.8 | which included record food sales at Twickenham on Saturday |
| 0:58.3 | of over half a million pounds. |
| 1:00.9 | I contributed two pasties, which is not both of them for me. |
| 1:04.6 | Every little helps. |
| 1:05.5 | Which is probably accounts about half of that bill |
| 1:08.4 | because they're not cheap pasties. |
| 1:09.6 | No, no. |
| 1:14.3 | But, you know, there were nowhere close to breaking the bar record. |
| 1:21.0 | But what that food record in all seriousness does show is how many people came early. |
| 1:26.6 | This wasn't the first double-header match at Twickenham that the RFU, or that Twickenham was hosted. |
| 1:31.5 | But usually, you know, remember they used to launch the Prem with a double header? |
| 1:31.9 | Yeah. |
| 1:36.2 | There'd be, the number of fans in the stadium remained about the same. |
| 1:39.2 | They just changed jerseys from one game to the next. |
| 1:45.1 | Whereas on Saturday, 50, 60,000 watching the first game, and they stuck around for two hours, final. |
| 1:47.7 | So epic on Saturday. |
| 1:53.1 | Really interesting catch up on Monday with some world rugby people just about the tournament, |
... |
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