Jersey Reds To Restructure Club

Friday, 25 March 2022 09:40

Jersey Reds' professional and amateur rugby sides are being separated in a restructure of the club.

The professional side of the club will break away to form a new, stand-alone company, allowing the Reds to seek investors to help it continue progressing through the Championship.

Chairman Mark Morgan says it will help to manage the club's finances and outstanding debt:

"The proposals is to take the professionals, create a brand new company, effectively, stick the whole professional operation into that and we have managed to deal with the debt on the basis that the debt we had will now be converted into equity in the new company which means that the amateur club - the old club - has no debt so as it begins to reform and run itself again, it does so with a clean slate."

Chairman Mark Morgan says having a professional squad owned by an amateur rugby member's club is no longer financially viable - and no other professional side is run that way.

He says the club's faced financial challenges over the last few years:

"In 2020, before the pandemic hit, we would have actually made a profit for the first time in a very long time. But unfortunately RFU cuts come along, Covid and so on and so forth, and it has been really hard to back-fill that so we have had to find another way to fund the organisation."

The club's members will have the final decision on the plans at a meeting this time next month.