In the autumn of 2018, English rugby found itself at a crossroads.

The Rugby Football Union (RFU) was in an uncertain place. The glowing confidence from hosting the World Cup three years earlier had long since faded.

The governing body had posted a loss of more than £30m for the previous financial year and been forced to make 54 redundancies; the vaunted “once-in-a-generation” investment in the grass-roots game from the World Cup profits had ground to a shuddering halt.

England had endured a tough season on the pitch too, coming fifth in the Six Nations Championship and losing the summer tour series to South Africa. Eddie Jones, the head coach, would hang on to his job, but Steve Brown, the RFU chief executive, was under mounting pressure. Yes, it is fair to say the Twickenham swagger was gone.

The English clubs, too, were pondering their future. Premiership Rugby (PRL) had been in negotiations with CVC, the private equity firm, since February that year, but their board rejected an £275m offer from CVC, the private equity firm, for a 51 per cent stake in the league.

As part of the deal, clubs would have received an upfront payment of £200m, though that would have led to a reduction in annual cash flow from the clubs to central PRL funds from £4m to £2m per season.

The clubs, while desperate for significant investment, did not want to cede control to CVC and felt the offer undervalued the PRL. At the same time, CVC, it is understood, contacted the RFU separately to discover whether there was a potential for joint investment in the governing body and PRL.

It was from this context that a radical solution was drawn up, one that could have led to the greatest change in the game in England since the sport opened the doors to professionalism in 1995.

The solution was a secret proposal called “Project Chariot”. At its heart was a revolutionary plan to form a joint venture between the RFU and the Premiership clubs.

Until now, only the key stakeholders in the English game at the time were aware of its contents. But several sources have confirmed its existence and that it became a major consideration for both the RFU and Premiership Rugby at the time.

And could it provide us with a glimpse into the future, given the extent of the change expected in the post-World Cup landscape?

The RFU viewed the Prem clubs’ need for a cash injection as a window of opportunity for much greater alignment between the domestic and international game.

A proper merger between the two professional wings of the game in England – the privately owned clubs and the RFU, backed by the cash cow of Test rugby – to smooth over the decades-long tensions between the two that had held both back.

Could this be the moment when the sleeping giant of English rugby finally wakes from its slumber?

Proposal attracted £500m in investment

It is understood that Simon Massie-Taylor, now the chief executive of PRL who at the time was the chief commercial and marketing officer at the RFU, drew up the proposal along with Lazard, the financial advisory firm that specialises in mergers.

The business definition of a joint venture (JV) is a business arrangement where two or more parties pool their resources, skills, and assets to achieve a specific goal or project.

The question was could the RFU and PRL find enough common ground to enable both club and country to dominate the world stage?

Sources said that the formation of a “NewCo”, a subsidiary company that would allow the RFU and PRL to focus on solely driving the professional game, was considered the preferred outcome, even if it was the one that had the most hurdles to overcome.

Both sides would have their red lines. The RFU would insist on protecting the administration and funding of the community game, but there were mutual benefits for both sides. Being able to offer broadcasters a package of both Premiership and Test matches would bring in more revenue from TV deals, while there would be significant cost savings from pooled resources and control of player wage inflation.

Those familiar with the proposal say there would have been several benefits. The introduction of full central contracts for the England players, as opposed to the hybrid arrangement agreed two years ago, was predicted to lead to several million pounds in savings.

The benefits for the England side would have included enhanced player access, with reduced game time for the top players to enable them to peak at key moments during the season for club and country, such as the Six Nations and the knock-out stages of the Champions Cup, and improved player welfare.

Critically, the merger would have enabled the RFU to retain control of the game in England, and maintain its voice on the world stage regarding the future of international tournaments and other big ticket items such as the development of Twickenham.

For the Premiership clubs, the merger would have led to a reduced number of league matches, but of improved quality because there would be less of an overlap with international windows. The costs of running the league would be reduced, and bigger sponsorship and broadcasting deals were predicted. The carrot would come in the form of a guaranteed up-front payment to compensate for the removal of payments to the clubs from the RFU under the existing professional game agreement.

But the overall benefits of the synergy of the merger were beyond the nuts and bolts of the deal. With clubs and RFU in a genuine and mutually beneficial partnership, the untapped potential of England as a powerhouse on the world stage could be exploited. Just as New Zealand, Ireland and, to a lesser degree, Scotland have been maximising their resources with an aligned domestic and international policy, Project Chariot would finally put England on the same footing.

The merger would also have precluded the need for either the PRL clubs or the RFU to sell a stake to private equity, with the NewCo proposal understood to have attracted an investment said to be close to £500m from a bank.

Project Chariot could be revived after the World Cup

It is understood that Project Chariot had received support from the RFU board, and it was then sent to Ian Ritchie, the former RFU chief executive who had become the PRL chairman following his departure from the governing body in 2017.

But in the chaos that followed, the moment to secure an historic agreement to end the club vs country fighting that had undermined English rugby since 1995 was lost.

The tough financial headwinds resulted in Brown being sacked in November 2018, and with the momentum stalled, the clubs proceeded to agree to a revised offer of £200m from CVC for a 27 per cent stake in PRL. The RFU would later agree, along with their Six Nations counterparts, to sell a stake in the championship to CVC for £365m for a 14 per cent share in 2021 after the devastating financial impact of the pandemic.

Yet what is intriguing is that the story of Project Chariot may not yet be finished. It is understood that the blueprint was strongly considered before the RFU and PRL agreed their new professional game partnership in 2024.

The eight-year £264m deal between the RFU, Premiership Rugby, and the Rugby Players’ Association (RPA), led to the introduction of enhanced elite player squad contracts for up to 25 England players, and a greater level of co-operation between club and country on the sharing of data and gave England the final say on medical matters, the clubs receiving £33m per season from the RFU and the formation of a professional rugby board to oversee the implementation of the agreement.

With the RFU and PRL now working closer than ever, despite ongoing issues between the two before next year’s World Cup in Australia, and the influence of CVC (their investment in rugby is now channelled through a fund called Global Sport Group) there is a sense that it could once again come under consideration after the tournament.

The RFU is likely to have a new chief executive in place by then. There is already a push for Welsh clubs to come under consideration when the Prem considers expanding to 12 clubs for the start of the 2029-30 season, and Massie-Taylor is now chief executive of PRL.

It is possible that the PGP could be a step towards a more formal joint venture. It would require a major overhaul of the RFU, moving away from its governing body roots and trusting a joint venture to run the England team and the commercial side of the RFU.

Jones, who was the England head coach, when Project Chariot was drawn up, once compared the intertwined structures of club and international rugby to the parable of Alexander the Great and the Gordian knot. Many of those complexities remain, but perhaps they may yet be overcome.