Q: What effect is the credit crunch having on our corporate sponsors and if it’s bad will we still be able to afford to keep the players we want to keep?

Mark Evans: It’s foolish to say that it won’t have an effect, the outlook doesn’t look good, the economy is probably in the worst state it’s been in for 80 years. It has only had a marginal impact so far, this closed season will be interesting.

We have always tried to spend what we could afford or what we could fund.

Regarding player wages, last season Newcastle Falcons and Bristol reduced their playing budgets. I have mentioned France in a previous answer. I don’t think it will effect Saints or Tigers. The billionaire owner at Sarries means that they will be OK, but lots of other clubs will feel that £2,000,000 isn’t what it used to be.

There will be a lag of about 18 months then there will be more of a difference between the big and small clubs.

Regarding sponsors everyone wants to keep the ones you’ve got because it will be more difficult to find new sponsors – there are lots of professional football teams that don’t currently have a main shirt sponsor lined up for next season.

At the moment we are doing alright but we are certainly not complacent.

The three main revenue streams are sponsorship, corporate and ticket sales. We’re doing quite well on ticket sales with 92.6% of our tickets being sold for Premiership and Heineken Cup games so far this season.

Q: Has the South Stand development project going to be put on hold?

Mark Evans: I don’t know at the moment, it’s still a possibility, whereas it was quite probably before the crunch it’s probably more like 50:50 now. It depends on being able to finance the deal and whether our cash flow can stand it.

Q: How many games will we get with our season ticket next season?

Mark Evans: You will get the Premiership games, the pool games in Europe and the home games in whatever other competition there is, which at the moment is the Anglo-Welsh League.

It would be my personal preference to increase the number of games in the Premiership but not to increase the number of clubs. Increasing the Premiership to 14 clubs means it’s a hell of a job to keep it competitive. I am very much against the French model of having 14 clubs but only having 4 or 5 big clubs who are always there at the top. The more clubs you have the harder it is to keep the league competitive.

As has already been mentioned Bristol and Newcastle have already dropped their wage bill and they were always going to be down the bottom of the league. Leeds, who I have a lot of time for as an outfit,  don’t overspend so you have to think that they will be 11^th or 12^th next season.

Two years ago Bristol came third which was an amazing feat for Richard Hill with the resources he had. I don’t think Bristol were expecting to do that so quickly.

If we want rugby to be a truly national professional sport then there will have to be a franchise system. If we don’t go that way then in the end we’ll end up with only five professional teams with none of them north of Leicester.

Q: How can you stop Network Rail or South West Trains from mucking up the trains for The Big Game II?

Mark Evans: I had a word with Boris, and don’t think that I didn’t!

There won’t be any engineering works, it will just be a Sunday service.

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