No Championship Club will be promoted into the Premiership this season after it was ruled Doncaster Knights and Ealing Trailfinders’ grounds did not meet the “minimum standards” expected by the RFU to reach rugby’s top tier.

In English Football’s Premier League, which has had an average attendance of 39,396 people per game this season, has a minimum seating requirement of 5,000, whilst in the Premiership, whose minimum is 10,001, has six of its 13 clubs failing to have an average attendance of that number so far this season.

This comes at the end of a more than 20-year campaign by the RFU and Premiership Rugby Limited, the latter of whose 13 clubs farcically own a more than 5% stake in the company each, to freeze out smaller clubs.

If there is no promotion this season, it will effectively ringfence the league and end any hope of a non-shareholding club being promoted.

Many of the mistakes of the past are too late to rectify, and any hope of recreating the French system of having two thriving, fully professional leagues that compete on a relatively similar footing are gone, but this petition will urge the RFU and Premiership Rugby Limited to rethink this decision and stop killing the club game outside the top 13.