Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
RFUJOB CUTS KILLING RUGBY
Warning as ALL community coaches and development officers are made redundant
RUGBY FOOTBALL UNION bosses were last night warned that one of their cost-cutting measures risks killing the national game within five years.
The decision by cash-strapped Twickenham to make redundant all of its community coaches and rugby development officers was slammed across the land.
Giles Hilton, chairman of fourthtier Canterbury, said: “Kill off community support and there’ll be no national game in five years.”
Back in May, Steve Grainger, the RFU rugby development director, admitted Covid presented the “biggest crisis and challenge rugby has ever faced”. Now chief executive Bill Sweeney estimates that the organisation faces a £107million loss in revenue over the next 12 months.
He and England head coach Eddie Jones have taken 25 per cent pay cuts, the players are set to see their match fees greatly reduced and the central contracts of the national Sevens squad are not being renewed.
In an attempt to further claw back losses, the RFU has decided 104 staff in the department charged with growing rugby and maintaining participation levels will go, though some new roles will be created.
Hilton said: “There will be a drain on the players for our national game and for our representative sides. Players will be lost and the talent pool available to England will be reduced.
“Every club is reliant on the RFU – it’s their go-to safety net. There’s nobody else with their experience in any club. It worries the living daylights out of me that this is all being put back on to the clubs at a time where our own income is under threat and we’re fighting for survival.
“Five years ago, rugby was so far ahead of cricket and football it was embarrassing. Now, the RFU is the weaker of the three organisations.” As Jones welcomed confirmation that England finally have a date to start playing Test rugby, the head coach’s enthusiasm for a Six Nations finale in Italy on October 31 was offset by deep concern that the game’s future has been plunged into jeopardy.
The Premiership finally returns behind closed doors next week after only one player and one staff member from a pool of 917 tested positive in yesterday’s fifth round of Covid screening.
But there is a subdued mood – reflected in the normally bullish Jones saying simply that, come
Halloween, “we are grateful for the opportunity to represent England again”. Which players get the chance to do so in future is a concern.
Exeter star Jack Maunder (left) can vouch for the value of the community game, having learnt his trade in Devon junior rugby.
“It’s hard to put into words how important grassroots rugby – and the support it gives you when you’re young – was for me,” he said.
“I’d go as far as to say I wouldn’t be playing rugby if it wasn’t for the support I was given at Cullompton.”
With the RFU taking an axe to those responsible for growing the sport, it is feared the community game will wither on the vine.
Three months on from the Covid crisis, clubs can train again.
But there is no income stream to cover even the “couple of hundred quid of sanitiser” Canterbury say they are going through each week.