Baxter: Cut games and we’ll all go bust
EXETER supremo Rob Baxter has warned that professional rugby will go bust if demands by players to play significantly fewer games are accepted.
Bath and England fullback Anthony Watson is the latest star to enter the welfare debate, declaring top players should appear no more than 20 times each season.
However, Chiefs rugby director Baxter insists that is not viable and urges a reality check over player welfare and who pays the players’ wages.
An impassioned Baxter told The Rugby Paper: “It’s the hardest thing for a coach to talk about because player welfare is so important and is such a big watchword at the moment.
“At Exeter we look after our players very well and we give them genuine time off during the season, probably more than any other Premiership club.
“We take player welfare very seriously because that’s my responsibility and if I don’t look after them, they’ll leave and other players won’t want to come.
“They’re our biggest asset and we want them to do well for us. But the flipside is you also need to have a competition that can sustain professional rugby, because if we don’t have that then there’s no point even talking about player welfare or how
games people are going to play because there won’t be any professional rugby.
“Everyone seems uncomfortable talking about it but, actually, there isn’t anybody walking away from professional rugby clubs pocketing a lot of money apart from the players.
“When I hear players taking about it, I feel like saying, ‘Okay, you’re involved in professional sport, but who is it that’s taking advantage of you?’
“All the clubs are trying to do is turn a profit to sustain their playing staffs – none are putting the money into anyone else’s pockets.”
Baxter added: “If Exeter makes a profit nobody says, ‘I’ve made a million pounds profit, great’, it all gets reinvested in the club.
“There’s nobody going, ‘I own this rugby club, that’s £2m I’ve made this year, let’s make the players play three more games so I can earn more’.
“There’s nobody in the Premiership doing that and that’s the bit where sometimes, when people talk about reducing the number of games, where do you make the limit?
“If you turned around now and said players could only play ten club games a year, professional rugby goes down the drain.
“If player welfare is such a big thing and the be-all and end-all, you should probably stop playing professional sport because I can’t think of anyone who could claim professional rugby, boxing or whatever is actually good for you.
“There has to be a balance but sometimes we jump on one thing.”
Exeter are currently the only Premiership club in profit, something Baxter claims is helping the club set new standards in player welfare.
He said: “Personally, I believe the best way to look after players is if the competition is profit-making. If it is, most clubs will reinvest that profit into the players because it’s your players that give you success and help drive the game.
“We’ve made decent money over the last two or three years and hundreds of thousands of pounds is getting reinvested into the playing side.
“We’ve got a bigger physio staff than we’ve ever had, we’ve got a sports science suite and equipment that goes right down to the academy.
“People say that’s selfish from us because we’re just trying to create better players, but the players are also benefitting.
“Our academy lads are coming up and having gait analysis from the age of 14 or 15, so that’s got to improve their running mechanics by the age of 18 or 19 which will stop them having injuries they might have later on.
“That’s got to be seen as a player welfare issue because it’s allowing them to have that dream of playing Premiership rugby, but it’s purely based on the fact we can afford to do it. If you can’t afford it, players will suffer.”
Premiership rugby’s season is likely to be extended by a fortnight from season 2019/20,
However, Baxter added: “Moving the fixture list isn’t going to hurt players, it’s only being done to help the clubs because currently Premiership rugby is sustained by people who are losing money.”