European mediocrity is a price worth paying
There won’t be any English representation in either of the European finals, and I’m not overly-bothered about that. It was The Rolling Stones that told us that we can’t always get what we want, but that sometimes we get what we need, and right now what English rugby needs is a thriving and financially secure Premiership, because without that the professional game, and the England team will wither and die.
For years the Premiership clubs lived beyond their means with some being regularly bailed out by rich sugar daddies, and others cheating on the rules because of PRL’s failure to properly police the salary cap, while the poorer clubs struggled along, unable to spend up to the ceiling of the cap. It was a shameful situation, and we as fans were complicit in the situation – as long as our club was prospering we were happy to turn a Nelson’s eye to it.
Then along came Covid, bringing matters to a head, and through necessity a measure of financial prudence came in. Although the cap was too high, the greatest evil was ‘excluded’ or marquee players. Think this through: a cap is set to ensure that
there’s a level playing field, and then over and above that a club could have two marquee players, potentially being paid £1m each! How on earth was that ever considered to be right or fair – some clubs could afford that spend, while others couldn’t? Next season we go to one excluded player, but as always the devil is in the detail, and if the two current marquee players are still in contract, that can continue until the first of those contracts expires.
What is even more worrying is that the PRL statement announcing the salary cap cut, said things would return to their former level of £6.4m by the start of the 2024-25 season at the latest. That might be possible as with another two seasons of
financial prudence, the clubs might all be on an even keel, but significantly there was no mention of returning to two marquee players, and I think that eliminating them altogether when the cap increases is what ought to happen.
As we go through this essential period of stabilising the clubs’ finances, the chances of winning European trophies will be hugely reduced, but does that matter? When you look at Leinster’s squad, or those of the top French sides, they’re probably going to be spending at least double that of any English club that is abiding by the rules: they’ll have more internationals, and more players in their squads. What that means is that at the business end
of the season, they can compete on two fronts: their domestic league, and in Europe. That’s a luxury the English clubs, with the financial restrictions under which they work, will struggle to match. That is what we saw over the past two weekends, and the pattern is likely to be repeated in future years.
We can’t do anything about creating a level playing field in Europe – that’s for the birds – but we can make things fair at home, and from a fan’s perspective, that really matters. We’ll have a league that’s built for long-term survival, and we’ll still be in Europe, with the attractive foreign trips, and we’ll win our fair share of games – we had two quarter-finalists in the Champions Cup, and two semi-finalrelative ists in the Challenge Cup.
The Premiership clubs need to get together and decide that the financial stability of the league is of paramount importance, and they need to commit to an absolutely level playing field: a cap set at a level that every club can manage, and no marquee players to skew it in favour of those clubs that have mega-rich owners. That’s how you achieve the highest level of competitiveness within the league, and where the clubs that have the best coaches and the strongest academies will come to the fore. Foreign imports commanding high salaries and keen to boost their pension pots should become a rarity, and the national side will benefit by having more Englishqualified players playing in the Premiership.
As a fan, of course I want my club to win trophies, and being less of a force in Europe for a few years will hurt, but what I want more than anything else is for my club, with its 150-year history, to be on a course where I can be confident that it will still be there for my kids and grandkids to enjoy. I think that’s sometimes lost on some of the here today, gone tomorrow owners – they may own the shares, but they’re merely the custodians of the clubs, and it’s their duty to put long-term survival ahead of short-term ambition.