SEDGLEY Park RUFC's chances of avoiding relegation by the back door, should National League One get permission to suspend relegation for this season, look to be floundering.

At a meeting of the Rugby Football Union (RFU) Council on Feb 3, a vote was passed to defer the decision until the next Council meeting on April 28 - the day before the final league games of the campaign.

That means bottom club Sedgley will have to achieve safety the hard way, by winning games and climbing the table and thus avoiding the botton two places.

It is a tall order, even though the Tigers have nine games left, with six at home.

The club had set out at the start of this season intent on improving on its tenth-placed finish last time out, the clubs first at this level.

The National Leagues - Divisions One, Two, Three North and Three South - along with their representative bodies, First Division Rugby (FDR) in the case of Division One, and the National Clubs Association, in the case of Divisions Two and Three, agreed they wanted to increase the size of the divisions from 14 teams to 16.

The idea was to avoid blank Saturdays during the season and the resulting loss in revenue they bring.

FDR and NCA had together petitiioned the RFU for the change, which meant the bottom two clubs in each divison would avoid relegation and be joined by the top two clubs from the division below.

The RFU duly set up a task force to look into the effects such a change would have on the game and reported back that it saw no reason why it could not go ahead.

It was therefore expected that at the RFU Council meeting the move would have been rubber-stamped, since a task force of its own agreed to the change.

But the clubs did not reckon on the power of the RFU Council's members, who appear to many to be out of step with moderrn developments in the game.

At the meeting a presentation was made to the Council by the chairman of the RFU task force, Bob Rogers, the RFU's senior vice president, supported by FDR chairman David Hammond and NCA chairman Sir Hal Miller, but it with met by criticism from several management board members.

Middlesex RFU's Rob Udwin moved to delay a decision on the matter, arguing they needed to extend its terms of reference to encompass the majority of the clubs in the county, a monumental task that looks almost impossible to complete by the April 28 deadline and the next RFU Council meeting.

Sedgley Park spokesman Ernie Neely, the club's nominated FDR director was incensed at the way the matter has been handled.

"Since entering the National Leagues we have spent over £1.5 million. Other clubs like Exeter, Penzance and Newlyn and Doncaster have either moved or invested heavily in their grounds and squads, yet still have blank dates to fill during the season," he said.

"This season we have eight empty Saturdays when we are not playing games and therefore not making any money, which seriously hinders our efforts to progress and help to develop the club and the game in our area.

"This whole episode shows how archaic the RFU is, with members who have no appreciation of how the game is developing, rolled out whenever it suits the RFU's interests.

"FDR has gone down the approved route but now the RFU has thrown a spanner in the works to safeguard its own interests, whatever they may be. If rugby is not allowed to develop it will die."

Some of the arguments raised to negate the change, apart from the lack of consultation with the lower levels of the game, include a failure to consult players or to bear in mind the possibilty of player burn-out; the effect expansion would have on playing and refereeing numbers; and the impact on county cup competitiions at all levels

However, locally, Michael Griffin, honorary secretary of Bury Rugby Club, who currently play six levels below Sedgley in North Lancs One, has no problem with the National Leagues' plans.

"We are so far down the pecking order that they would have very little effect on us, " he said.

"There is a possibility the league above us might have to reorganise, which could lead to us facing teams from Cumbria and all that that implies for travelling, but that is about it.

"Expansion would create opportunities for more of the better junuior clubs to climb the league ladder, and I would have thought players would prefer to play league games every Saturday if they could. I am all for expansion of the National Leagues."