Genge to plan new union for players

ENGLAND and Leicester prop Ellis Genge has announced plans to set up a new players’ union after feeling some people were badly advised after being asked to accept pay cuts amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Genge insists his proposed new organisation would complement rather than rival the Rugby Players’ Association.

The RPA represents more than 1200 past and present professional players, both male and female, but Genge claims his new group would have an advantage because “we wouldn’t have to answer to a governing body.”

The 25-year-old said on the BBC Sport website: “We are not making a new RPA. I think they do really good stuff with welfare in rugby and they look after people really well.

“But I do feel that people were poorly advised. People were advised from the off to sign the contracts without reading them, almost. Commercially, I didn’t think everyone was being represented very well.

“So I am trying to put together a players’ union. It is not to replace the RPA or to combat the RFU. Honestly, it is nothing of the sort.

“It is just so people can get really good advice from trusted professionals in those specific fields: around commercial and legal.”

Most Gallagher Premiership clubs asked players to accept blanket 25 per cent pay cuts following the suspension of sport.

Meanwhile, fnishing the rest of the 2019/20 Premiership season on the pitch is still a realistic prospect, according to Gloucester CEO Lance Bradley.

Bradley believes completing the current campaign, which has been put on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic, remains a priority and said playing matches behind closed doors is still a reasonable solution.

Although Bradley admitted that he doesn’t believe next season will be ‘compromised,’ he doesn’t expect it to be a ‘perfectly normal one.’

He said all Premiership matches can be played, both the current season and the next one, but clubs will have to regularly use a bigger pool of players than they would usually.

“We will probably find that we use our whole squad more than we would have done,” Bradley told ITV.

“If we finish this season and then go into next season it’s going to mean a fairly intensive run of games and you have to make sure that you manage that properly.

“You can’t expect the same players to turn out every week on that kind of basis so we would be using more of our academy players than we would have done.

“I think everybody’s prepared to make some compromises to get the best possible outcome we can, which is to finish this season and have a proper season next season.”