Cornish Pirates: Dicky Evans to end funding of Championship club by 2025

Dicky Evans was part of a consortium that took over Cornish Pirates in 2016, having sold his interest in 2014

Cornish Pirates benefactor Dicky Evans is to end his 27-year association with the Championship club.

The businessman, who sold his stake in the club to Jersey-based firm Vorladron Limited last May, has pledged £2.5m over the next three years to give the Pirates time to find new owners.

Under his funding the club rose from the seventh tier of English rugby to play in the professional second tier.

Evans says he will also phase out his funding of Truro City Football Club.

He has previously pledged £1.3m towards a new stadium on the outskirts of Truro to be used by both clubs.

"I would never let the team down," Evans said in a statement on the club website.

"This move is my last gift to them, handing on a successful club with a large and loyal fan base, to investors with the will and capacity to see the Pirates into the Premiership, up to the top of that league and into Europe. This is my Sunset Plan, but a new dawn for Pirates."

Kenya-based Evans saved the club from bankruptcy in the 1990s and financed Pirates' rise to the Championship.

He sold his stake in 2014 but returned in 2016 after financial problems.

"Dicky Evans is a home-grown champion without whom Cornish Pirates would not exist," chairman Paul Durkin told the club website.

"He saved us from bankruptcy and led us up division after division to the very top of the Championship. His tenure will be forever a golden age for Pirates."

Evans has seen the club twice make the Championship play-off final - losing to Worcester in 2011 and London Welsh in 2012 - as well as winning the 2010 British and Irish Cup.

He has reportedly already put £18m into the club, but the onset of Parkinson's disease has seen his day-to-day involvement become less, although he is still on the club's board of directors.

The club are still hoping to move to the planned Stadium for Cornwall on the outskirts of Truro, which would be shared between the Pirates and Truro City, who Evans and the Pirates acquired in 2019.

In a statement Pirates said Evans' money will allow "a full-time professional side to continue to challenge for the Premiership while a graceful transition to new investors is executed".

The club is hopeful of interest both locally and internationally - New Zealand-based Cornish businessman Colin Groves, who has links with Super Rugby side Waikato Chiefs is still on Pirates' board, as is former England player Martin Haag.