Ryan hits out at ‘slave labour’
Sevens coaching legend Ben Ryan has tagged rugby’s continued lack of revenue sharing with second-tier nations as akin to ‘‘slave labour’’.
Ryan, who guided Fiji to the inaugural Olympic sevens gold medal in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, made several impassioned pleas on the state of rugby in a forthright interview with The Guardian, the most striking of which was strident criticism around the treatment of second-tier nations such as those from the Pacific Islands and Japan.
It has already been reported this week that Jamie Joseph’s Japan players preparing to play England at Twickenham this weekend are earning $27 (2000 yen) a day this week and, as per World Rugby’s archaic revenue arrangements, will garner none of the millions of pounds in gate receipts from the vast London super venue.
Fiji were pumped 54-17 by Scotland at the weekend under the same sort of arrangements and Ryan felt the result was unavoidable because of woefully inadequate preparation time for the Fijians.
‘‘It’s not far off slave labour,’’ Ryan told
The Guardian. ‘‘If you are playing somewhere where the crowd is over a certain figure you should get some of the money. At the moment it’s a case of ‘We’ll fly you over and give you a nice few days in the Lensbury Club, but that’s where it stops’.’’
Ryan knows a thing or two about the vast discrepancies in modern rugby at the top level, and wrote a book on the challenges he faced in his time as Fiji’s national sevens coach including having to use his own money at one stage to fill the team bus with petrol and provide bottled water for his players.
Ryan told The Guardian he has major concerns for rugby as a professional sport, telling the British paper ‘‘if rugby were a company people would be comparing it to an Enron’’.
Along with the injustices between the sport’s Haves and Have-Nots, Ryan is concerned about the application of the laws and the direction the XV-a-side game is taking.
‘‘There’s so much grey in the lawbook. There are at least three laws – collapsing rucks, not staying on your feet wilfully and shoulders below your hips – we just ignore. It’s incredibly dangerous,’’ he said.
‘‘I’m seeing these boys getting bigger and more physical and they’re getting smashed up on a more regular basis. Even kids at under-14 level are getting smashed at breakdowns.’’
Ryan said the perception is that ‘‘bluntforce trauma’’ was the way to win professional rugby contests. ‘‘In the Top 14 the referees are being told: ‘Don’t even bother refereeing the breakdown, just see what happens.’ It’s just a mess,’’ he added.
‘‘We need people to start saying: ‘What is this going to look like in 20 years’ time?’ Do we want a more skill-based game? Players just finishing their careers are already saying: ‘This isn’t fun.’ I’m thinking: ‘These guys are twice the size of me 20 years ago.’ What happens if that happens again in the next 20 years?
‘‘The game is going in the wrong direction. There are still too many stakeholders and too many invested decisions. The process of trying to make the product better is a broken one.’’