Sadly, RFU doesn’t have bottomless pit of money
“Any increase in funds that go to the Premiership has to be taken away from the rest of the game”
It’s strange how often we read one story but do not immediately connect it to another, plus, how one effects the other and either makes or breaks the point. In last week’s paper, we had an almost perfect example, with three seperate enthusiasts voicing their rugby concerns, but I think they are all linked.
First, we had Harry Plunkett’s letter bemoaning the fact that the RFU do not do enough to help the Premiership clubs and should pay a player’s entire wages when he is on England duty. He also believes the clubs should get even more money to compensate them and that the RFU should change the rule about selecting players from other leagues, in particular France.
I hate to be a party pooper, but the £228 million that the RFU are paying to the clubs for player release more than compensates them for the wages of the players while away on England duties, particularly if you add in EQP payments etc.
As for the selection of players from other leagues, it was part of the original RFU agreement with the Premiership, who insisted that no players could be picked for the England squad from any league other than the Premiership, including other English clubs outside the Premiership, as well as those who play abroad.
If Harry read Dusty Hare’s comments in TRP, he would have seen that a big part of the financial problems facing the clubs is nothing to do with lack of RFU funds but the increasing wage demands of players and agents.
As Dusty pointed out, the wage cap was £4.5m just four years ago and is now £7.5million – yet squads have either remained the same size or got smaller, which indicates that wages have risen by a whopping 66 per cent in just four years and show no sign of slowing down.
When I have spoken about this, I am often told that rugby players earn far less than footballers do, which is true but there is a simple reason for this. Despite its image, rugby is a relatively small sport with a small but growing fan base that does not provide enough revenue from either spectators or television, and so must rely on direct funding.
As Dusty said, crowds are modest and bring in limited funds, despite the Premiership trumpeting how well they are doing with growing crowds. The first six weeks of this season averaged 12,442 per game, or 74,652 in total for the whole Premiership per week, which is less than Manchester United manage alone with an average of 74,997.
All of this indicates that rugby at all levels is currently living way beyond its means and, as the failure of the attempt to up the ante for the Six Nations title sponsorship because of an over estimation of its value in current economic climate proves, there is a desperate need by the Unions to increase revenues.
Although the impact of that £5m loss will be less on RFU than the other Unions, it will still put extra strain on the Union’s resources, which are already stretched.
Evidence of this was supplied by an emotional interview with Martin Whitcombe, the Bradford & Bingley director of rugby, in last week’s paper. He believes the efforts to make the Premiership a success is slowly killing the rest of the game.
Martin seems to be saying that many of the new supporters that the Premiership claims to have are in fact players from the lower leagues that don’t want or can’t afford to travel to play for their club’s away games.
When the league system was put in place by the RFU there was supposed to be an incremental funding structure to aid clubs with travel and hotel expenses as they travelled greater distances to league fixtures.
Martin pointed out that most clubs used to play in local leagues without too much travelling time between clubs, but now some games are a five- hour trip making it virtually impossible for anyone who has a job outside the game to contemplate.
This has reduced the number of senior teams in many grassroots clubs from between four or five (or more in most clubs) to just two or three.
As a result of increased spending by the RFU on the Premiership, much of the direct grassroots funding has been diverted away from those clubs, with the RFU instead helping grassroots clubs to ‘improve their financial flexibility’ to earn money from outside the game.
If you look at all these articles, there is a single vein that runs through them: namely that there is a perception that the RFU have a bottomless pit of money that can be called on at any time to bail out the professional game, while still funding the development and growth of the game at all levels.
Sadly, this is not true as Whitcombe attested to, and what has to be understood is that any increase in funds that go to the Premiership has to be taken away from the rest of the game. A fourth article by Colin Boag, highlighting Worcester’s current plight, would seem to indicate it is not just the grassroots that have problems.