Jeff Probyn: CVC deal may not be good for rugby
“How can anyone think that all the best players in the English game reside in 280 EQP in the 12 Premiership clubs?”
Colin Boag’s article last week was right, we should raise a glass to the owners who stepped in to save a number of clubs from bankruptcy as they sought to guard their position at the elite end of the sport when the game went professional.
Who knows what could have happened if they had not stepped in, or if the RFU had taken action against Newcastle when Sir John Hall broke the RFU one-year moratorium on professionalism by signing Rob Andrew, Steve Bates and Dean Ryan from Wasps?
Instead of the mad rush to sign as many star players for more money than the game could afford, we may have started like professional football, which for around 50 years had a maximum wage level roughly equal to or slightly above the national average wage. This would mean players nowadays would be earning around £34,000 per year, instead of (in some cases) ten times that amount.
The advantage for the football clubs re the maximum wage was that they were able to develop and build their facilities over those 50 years without accumulating massive debts.
It also helps to explain the working class bias towards football because those with private school educations were able to earn much more than the average footballer while pursuing a career in commerce.
Colin seems at odds with the facts in his comments that the Premiership is hugely successful, as most clubs have large debts and would be forced to close if the owners walked away.
He questioned whether I understand what the RFU are buying with the £225m they pay the clubs? I can assure him I do.
They are paying for a limited number of extra training days as required by the England head coach outside the release dates specified in article 9 of World rugby regulations, which control the release of players for international games.
This should give England an advantage over their rivals, particularly as the Premiership withhold release of foreign players outside the specified World Rugby windows.
That was certainly the case this autumn with South African star Faf de Klerk released by Sale to watch in the stand at Twickenham. But not allowed to play.
Colin’s assertion that the clubs run the academies is true but only because the clubs demanded that the academies were under their umbrella, and they receive around £200,000 each for the privilege.
It also provides Premiership clubs with the first shot at locally identified talent (picked by the school county system) at no cost and without consequences for the hundreds (if not thousands) of young men who leave academies without contracts, some of whom will be hidden gems as late developers.
Part of the clubs’ funding is reliant on the number of English qualified players in the match-day squad of 23 which explains why Nigel Wray felt it was unfair when half the Saracens first choice squad were on England duty, with the club being refused EQP payments.
Colin also talked about the strong club culture. While that may be true of the midlands, in the north and around the Cornwall area there was always a strong county culture as there weren’t and still aren’t many senior clubs.
With just Newcastle and Sale reprethe senting a part of the country with more rugby clubs than the rest of the England, I am sure that if the Premiership had not blocked representative rugby below the England squad, county rugby could have provided an adequate testing ground for young developing players, as it did before professionalism. Dare I say, it could provide the players to fill the void in talent that Colin seems to think exists among the 120,000 male players outside the Premiership in England.
I cannot believe that anyone could think that all the best players in the English game reside in approximately 280 EQP in the 12 Premiership clubs?
Colin is right, the Premiership and the RFU have reached an accommodation but I am not sure I agree with the view that it suits both parties.
Then we have CVC, great news for the clubs? I suggest anyone who thinks so should read Giles Richards’ article in Guardian dated 10/9/18 headlined, ‘CVC ownership of F1 should serve as a warning to Premiership Rugby’.
In it, he quotes Bob Fernley, then deputy team principal of Force India, who accused CVC during that time of “raping the sport”. In 2016 he summed up everything about the firm’s relationship with F1 in a single sentence. “All their actions have been taken to extract as much money from the sport as possible and put as little in as possible.”
Part of the Premiership deal is to bring the game to a wider audience – but the reverse happened in F1 with a fall of 137m spectators worldwide since 2010. If what Richards reported is true, what appears to be a short term gain by the 13 share holding clubs may yet turn out to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and persuade some owners that enough is enough to the detriment of all in our game.