Premiership Rugby, officially known as Gallagher Premiership Rugby, or the Gallagher Premiership for sponsorship reasons, is an English professional rugby union competition, consisting of 11 clubs, and is the top division of the English rugby union system. Premiership clubs qualify for Europe's two main club competitions, the European Rugby Champions Cup and the European Rugby Challenge Cup. The winner of the second division, the RFU Championship is promoted to the Premiership and until 2020, the team finishing at the bottom of the Premiership each season was relegated to the Championship. The competition is regarded as one of the three top-level professional leagues in the Northern and Western Hemispheres, along with the Top 14 in France, and the cross-border United Rugby Championship for teams from Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Italy and South Africa. The competition has been played since 1987, and has evolved into the current Premiership system. The current champions are Leicester Tigers. The most recently promoted side are Saracens, who returned to the top flight in 2021. History Beginnings: English domestic rugby union until 1972 The governing body of rugby union in England, the Rugby Football Union (RFU), long resisted leagues as it was believed that the introduction of leagues would increase 'dirty' play and put pressure on clubs to pay their players (thereby contravening the amateur ethos). Instead, clubs arranged their own fixtures and had traditional games. The only organised tournaments were the County Cups and County Championship – the former played by clubs and the latter by County representative teams. The Daily Telegraph and a few local newspapers – such as the Yorkshire Post – compiled 'pennants' based on teams' performances, but as the strength of fixture lists varied, it was at best an estimate of a team's performance throughout a season. 1972–1995: Leagues and cups In 1972 the RFU sanctioned a national knock-out cup – the RFU Club Competition, the predecessor to the Anglo-Welsh Cup – followed first by regional merit tables and then, in the mid-1980s, by national merit tables. One of the casualties of the move to competitive leagues was the loss of some traditional games as the new fixture lists didn't allow time for all of them. The league system has evolved since its start in 1987 when the Courage Leagues were formed – a league pyramid with roughly 1,000 clubs playing in 108 leagues, each with promotion and relegation. In the first season,