Divisional Championship (rugby union)

The president of the Rugby Football Union (RFU) during the 1976/77 season, former England scrum-half and captain Dickie Jeeps, organised a series of meetings with club and county administrators and persuaded them that a divisional championship involving the country's best players would present a high standard of play to assist selectors in choosing a successful international team.

The inaugural tournament took place a year later during the 1977/78 season. The country was divided into four representative areas, North, Midlands, London, and South & South-West, which had previously formed as teams to play mostly against international touring sides, and each division had a national selector acting as chairman of their respective selection committee.[1]

In the championship's first final, held on 17 December 1977 at Twickenham, the North beat the Midlands 22-7, while earlier in the day London beat the South & South-West 22-15 in the play-off for third and fourth place.[5] But the championship was short-lived, because in the following two seasons the tournament was cancelled owing to the demands of fixtures against touring teams and only revived again, briefly, for the 1980/81 season before the RFU decided to abolish the concept altogether and return to the traditional 'club, county, country' line of progression.[2]

In the early 1980s, the RFU instructed its Playing Sub-Committee to produce a report called 'Proposed New Playing Structure to Improve Quality of Play at Representative Level'. It became better known as the Burgess Report after its lead creator, John Burgess, the former Lancashire, North and England coach, and (later) RFU president. The report identified the lack of serious competition as the cause of the England team's underachievement.[6] One of its key recommendations was to re-introduce the concept of a Divisional Championship, but with each division playing each other in a round-robin system to decide the winner.

So, after a break of four seasons, the Divisional Championship returned in December of the 1985/86 season and was won for the first time by the Midlands, who claimed victories in all three of their matches.[7]

In late 1995, chairman of the RFU's competitions committee, John Jeavons-Fellows, helped create an RFU report that called for the abolition of the Divisional Championship, and on 18 December 1995 the RFU formally announced the end of the tournament with divisional rugby to continue in the form of matches against international touring teams, as it had done prior to the championship's inauguration.