"The clubs are angry," said the source. "The Premiership have been paying us £1million for the last eight years and despite their new increased deal with the RFU, they are only promising to up their funding after four years if we ditch the play-offs. We are being shafted."  Steve Lloyd, who along with Tony De Mulder has helped finance Doncaster's remarkable rise up the leagues, with the club missing out on promotion to the Premiership in the play-off final against Bristol last season, said the onus was on the RFU to increase their funding if they wanted the league to remain fully professional.  There has been no agreement and the Championship clubs can rightly claim to be the poor brother in all of this and we are currently playing a game of cards in which we just don't have a hand, let alone a good hand," said Lloyd.  "We feel that there has been a lack of conversation between PRL and RFU and the Championship clubs.  "If the RFU are the owners and funders of the Championship, that should start with a business plan. When we inquired as to what they wanted of the championship two or three years ago, we were told that they wanted us to be a full-time professional league.  "If we don't get the necessary funding, the clubs are going to have to revert to being part-time professional or even amateur status.  "The danger of that is if we go part-time professional, outside of London, clubs will struggle to get the players. Guys can get good jobs in London and play part-time but that becomes more difficult up north and in the Midlands. Our fear is that in 10 year's time, 10 out of the 12 clubs in the championship would be in London."
The Rugby Football Union and Premiership Rugby have been accused of plunging the Championship into financial jeopardy by failing to increase funding of English rugby's second tier as part of the £