Top players earn over £400k in the Premiership

Four per cent of players in the Gallagher Premiership were paid £400,000 or more in the 2020-21 season. According to the first disclosure of average salaries for top-flight players following the release of Premiership Rugby’s salary-cap report, just under 30 per cent were paid £50,000 to £100,000.

Fly-halves were the best-paid players at an average income of £175,679, followed by centres and locks. Hookers were paid the least, with an average of £113,115. Tighthead props, once one of the highestpaid positions, were grouped with looseheads in the sixth highest-paid position.

The publication of the figures comes in the wake of Lord Myners’s report, which stemmed from the salary-cap breaches for which Saracens were investigated in 2019. One of the report’s main recommendations was a call for greater transparency on how the cap operates.

The report for the 2020-21 Premiership season, when the salary cap was at £6.4million, includes data for Saracens, despite the club at the time playing in the Championship. It shows that 24 players had marquee status, or, as the report calls them, “excluded players”. One club did not have any marquee players during the 2020-21 season.

Simon Massie-taylor, Premiership Rugby’s chief executive, confirmed that the salary cap, which is currently at £5 million, would return to £6.4million for the 202425 season. He added that the Premiership champions each year would be subjected to an extensive salary-cap audit, with 2020-21 champions Harlequins being the first to go through that process.

“That is an effective tool to answer lingering questions,” Massie-taylor said. “Things like that are important and build credibility with the fans.”

New regulations have allowed Premiership Rugby greater authority to investigate potential indiscretions by Premiership clubs, including the ability to look at tax returns, bank returns, mobile phones and emails.

Andrew Rogers, the league’s salary-cap director, stressed that all clubs were fully on board with the transparent reports and aware of the tougher punishments that could be handed out for salary-cap breaches.

“All the clubs are being very open and transparent with me managing their squads every season and that has been very positive,” Rogers said. “The open communication amongst all the clubs is very positive now.

“The key element was the recommendation to ensure there are appropriate sanctions in place to deal with any transgressions. We’ve got really strong investigatory powers now and ways to monitor things, but equally the deterrent is there so that if someone does decide to transgress, the powers are there so that they can have trophies stripped, they can have relegation. There are some serious sanctions.”