A stronger club We will come out better from Covid
LANCE Bradley says Gloucester Rugby will come out of the Covid-19 pandemic in a stronger place.
The chief exectutive revealed that the lockdown has cost the club around £5million but said the measures the club has taken and the changes behind the scenes will strengthen its’ future.
“What I said to all of the staff back in March was that we would come out of this stronger than we went in,” he said.
“We used this three month period to make sure we have the right people in place, to make sure we have got the right processes in place to make sure we have the right standards in place and now we have.
“We have come out stronger than we went in. There are still challenges to be faced but as an organisation we are better now than we were three months ago.
“It’s been incredibly challenging because when it all started to happen back in March it quite quickly became apparent that we were going to have no or very limited income for an unknown period.
“There is nothing you can do about not having income but there are things you can do about your costs and that is what we did.”
His first action was to volunteer for a 25 per cent pay cut, followed by chief operations officer Alex Brown, and then to ask all the staff and players to follow suit.
“We got the senior playing group in early in the process, as soon as it became apparent that this was real and something serious was going to happen and we showed them the numbers,” he said.
“We went through the numbers with them and said that because of this uncertainty there is no alternative to asking everyone to take this voluntary cut
“They were really good about that. They got it quickly - they had questions of course as no one is happy to be asked to take a 25 per cent pay cut. They were very helpful in explaining the message to the rest of the players.
“The day after we spoke to the senior players, we got all the players in as a group and explained the situation to them and they had questions but there was a pretty reasonable response to it.
“We said to all of the players that if they didn’t want to accept the 25 per cent cut and they could do better elsewhere they were welcome to pursue that opportunity.
“A relatively small number of them have, mostly to Japan and one to France.
“In Japan in particular there is a lot more money as the clubs there are generally owned by big corporations which have not been affected in the same way and that’s fine.
“That was their choice to do that, it is a relatively short career and it was their prerogative to do that.
“We got all the other staff together that same day and explained what was happening.
“It’s hard explaining to a player on £300,000 a year that they are going to lose a quarter of that, but it is harder explaining to one of our cleaning colleagues on 12 grand a year that they are going to lose four grand of it - that’s a real problem
“It was quite humbling as it was the cleaners and the lower-paid people who came up to me afterwards and said thank you.
“When I asked them what they were thanking me for, they said ‘I’ve still got a job’”
Bradley paid tribute to what he called the “great team spirit” across the whole club.
There have been redundancies - five in the commercial department - and all but seven staff at the club were placed on furlough leave.
“We have bringing people back,” he said. “The strength and conditioning guys came back three or four weeks ago, the coaches are coming back, the players are no longer on furlough and our commercial team is starting to come back as the business side of the operation starts to pick up again.”
Bradley said that they are now in the process of talking to players about what we happens going forward in what he called “a new environment for rugby.”
He added: “We couldn’t do that before we had our new head coach in place.
“One or two players had contracts extended a couple of weeks ago - they were the ones George knew about and we got them signed up
“The other guys he wanted to look at before we started conversations.
“We are talking to players about the need to take a cut but in some cases that can be tempered a bit by offering contract extensions - but that is George’s shout so we are going through those discussions now.”
Skivington’s first game in charge of Gloucester will be a local derby trip to Sixways to take on Worcester Warriors on Saturday August 15.
Hist first game at Kingsholm will be a derby clash with Bristol Bears on Friday August 21, before a mid-week trip to Saracens on August 26.
The Cherry & Whites then welcome Leicester Tigers to Kingsholm on Sunday, August 30.
Bradley said he had not yet had confirmation of whether any supporters will be allowed into grounds.
“We remain hopeful that we will be allowed to have some people in,” he said.
“Restaurants can open and our 1873 Club is a restaurant. So if you can have restaurants open then surely we can have people in ours.
“So we are waiting. It is unlikely we will be allowed a full house of fans for a little while but I am optimistic.
“Football is talking about having crowds back in September, so if that is possible hopefully we will be able to do the same.”
We have come out stronger than we went in. There are still challenges to be faced but as an organisation we are better now than we were three months ago