Wage cap plan ‘will harm potential England players’
ROSSLYN Park managing director Shaun Justice fears the development of England players will be stymied by new proposals before the RFU Council.
Council members will vote next month on Union plans to cap wages at £150,000 per club in National One, while The Rugby
Paper understands Championship clubs remain keen to push ahead with a plan that would see the third tier champions forced to play-off with the Chamtation bottom team for the right to be promoted.
Justice insists a combination of the two would amount to ring-fencing by stealth and that the knockon effects would be devastating to level three clubs like his.
Justice said: “All the signs suggest the professional end of the game will be ring-fenced by stealth, which will be a massive shame.
“There’ll be huge knockon effects if they take away the dreams of National One clubs, many of whom have better structures than some Championship clubs.
“To shut the door on them without any consulpetitive would not be great for the game and whatever the RFU are planning, whether it’s for the next three or five years, I just wish they would come clean and make things clearer to clubs like ours.
“If you introduce wage caps and remove the compionship’s element, the gap between the Championship and National One will grow; crowds will suffer, income at every level will fall and I don’t see how our clubs could develop.”
Justice believes such a scenario would directly affect the flow of talent into Eddie Jones’s senior England squad.
He explained: “I don’t think people appreciate the bigger picture of just how many of the current England squad have played National One rugby.
“At Rosslyn Park in recent years we’ve faced Jonathan Joseph (Barnes), Joe Launchbury (Worthing), Joe Marler, Kyle Sinckler and Jack Clifford (all Esher), Maro Itoje (Old Albanians), Mako Vunipola (Clifton) and George Kruis (Barking).
“We’ve got three of the current England U20s squad on loan to us in Sam Aspland-Robinson, Dom Morris and Rory Brand and a pretty high per centage of the team that just won the Six Nations Grand Slam play in this league.
“National One has made a huge contribution to England but if you suddenly ring-fence it and clubs can no longer afford to maintain or improve their standards, will that healthy situation continue? I don’t believe it could.”