"Following a meeting of the RFU's Club Financial Viability Group, the RFU can confirm the suspension of Wasps from Premiership Rugby and Premiership Rugby Cup for the remainder of the 2022/23 season. The RFU is encouraged by the progress made by the administrators." - RFU
Friday 28 October 2022 18:36, UK
The RFU has confirmed Wasps will be suspended for the remainder of the 2022/23 Gallagher Premiership season, but say "encouraging progress" is being made on the search for a new buyer.
Wasps, who already had their relegation to the Championship confirmed due to going into administration and were temporarily suspended, will now not feature for the remainder of the Premiership campaign.
The club were placed into administration early last week and immediately ceased trading. All previously contracted players and staff departed the club as it entered into insolvency.
Worcester Warriors suffered the same fate three weeks before Wasps. The aim for both clubs is now to find new buyers, which will allow them to compete in the Championship next season and rebuild.
"Following a meeting of the RFU's Club Financial Viability Group today, the RFU can confirm the suspension of Wasps from Gallagher Premiership Rugby and Premiership Rugby Cup for the remainder of the 2022/23 season," the RFU confirmed on Friday.
"The RFU's Club Financial Viability Group is encouraged by the progress made by the administrators and it has taken the decision to suspend the team in order to support the prospect of securing a deal with the right investor and giving the club the best chance for a long-term sustainable future.
"Any potential investors and management will require due diligence and approvals from the RFU and PRL. A condition of any potential deal will include a requirement for the payment of all rugby creditors.
"The decision also gives certainty to PRL and Premiership rugby clubs to protect the integrity of Gallagher Premiership Rugby and allow clubs and their teams to plan for the rest of the season.
"Under RFU Regulations, Wasps will be relegated from Gallagher Premiership Rugby, and therefore if investors can be secured, the club will restart in the Championship in season 2023/24. The club is able to appeal this decision if it can show there was no fault insolvency."
Will Greenwood has implored Premiership Rugby and the Rugby Football Union to come together and find "a connected solution" for the future of English rugby following the financial crises experienced by Worcester and Wasps.
"It's enormously worrying," he told Sky Sports. "First of all, my sympathies get extended to the players, the staff, the backroom staff and the whole communities behind Worcester and Wasps whose livelihoods are on the line and are finding themselves looking for work elsewhere, at a time when houses are full within other Premiership clubs.
"Where are Wasps in the pantheon of sides? I don't necessarily want to separate them from Worcester, they must be looked at as a pair when we talk about the long-term implications of rugby - but Wasps are your Manchester United.
"For the late '90s, early 2000s, two Heineken Cups, four Premiership titles. What a team - some of the players that went through there, Alex King, Josh Lewsey, Josh Worsley, Lawrence Dallaglio, Fraser Waters, the names just roll off the tongue - absolute Jedis of rugby.
"Professional rugby has been going for 26 years and in that time, we have seen Orrell, London Scottish, London Welsh, Richmond, clubs having a go, dabbling with professionalism and coming unstuck.
"We thought some of the bigger clubs would be immune from that. This isn't a Covid thing - Covid clearly was a huge factor towards it, but these clubs have been struggling to survive long before that.
"Yes [alarm bells have been ringing for some time]. Now it's about viability and visibility - let's work out who is viable and hope there is no one else in the same boat."
We've looked into the ongoing crisis engulfing English club rugby, with four-time Premiership winners and two-time European champions Wasps the second club to enter into administration, three weeks after Worcester.
Administration has seen Wasps become the second Premiership club to succumb to financial turmoil following the demise of Worcester - now player-less, as yet without new ownership and relegated from the Premiership.
Wasps, ever-presents in the Premiership's 25-year history, will follow suit out of the top flight and into England's second tier - provided they can find new owners and continue to exist.
Suspension, administration, relegation, players without wages and staff job losses for one of England's biggest and most famous clubs. A club which has been home to some of the most famous players the sport has seen.
Read our feature in full to find out how it got to this point.
