‘Elite’ may have to be sacrificed for cashflow
Last week, Ellis Genge tweeted ‘Nearly 100 Premiership rugby players will now be without a club for the 22/23 season. Nothing to do with their rugby ability, just finances.
Worrying times ahead. As a result of the salary cap reductions, clubs are having to cut their cloth differently, and sadly that has to mean that some players will be squeezed out. It’s commendable that Genge has come out in support of those players facing an uncertain future, but does his intervention really help in any way? Part of the problem is the mega-high salaries paid to superstars – if any of them would play for £50k less, another job could be protected!
In a subsequent tweet, he was seemingly in denial about the financial problems clubs are facing, saying that no club would go bust, because someone would step in and buy them.
No-one outside of a club really knows how bad the situation is, but in recent weeks we’ve seen one club, Wasps, delaying the redemption of bonds while they refinance and another, Worcester Warriors, delaying some salary payments due to a temporary cash-flow issue.
However it is dressed up, these aren’t the signs
of an industry that’s flush with cash at the present time, which is hardly a surprise given what we’ve all been through. I’d be very surprised if there was a club out there that isn’t feeling the pinch, and I suspect that some owners will once again have had to put their hands in their pockets to keep things going.
Genge is in a highlyprivileged position: he’s one of the best in the world in one of the most highly-paid positions in rugby, and he’s just joining a club with the richest of the Premiership’s owners. Bristol went public on their opposition to the announcement in 2020 of the salary cap reductions, and were vocal on their support for
the cap returning to its original level, or higher, in 2024.
The suggestion that there’s always a rich man or woman waiting to step in and save any troubled club seems to me to be a pretty dubious one, and dangerous to boot! If a wealthy individual wanted to own a club then I bet there are Championship clubs, and even Premiership ones, that would welcome an approach, but it just isn’t happening.
Furthermore, one of the great evils of English rugby has been having a model that can’t sustain itself, and has to rely on cash injections to keep the show on the road. The current situation where good people are being let
go because of the cap reductions, is in fact one that’s of the clubs own making.
To have allowed a salary cap and salary inflation, that led to almost all clubs making a loss in most years, was totally irresponsible, and I would argue that Covid probably saved the industry because it delivered a harsh dose of reality.
Finally the clubs agreed to face up to the situation, and came together, albeit with a measure of reluctance from some, to try to get a grip on things.
Once we see the next set of financial results from Premiership clubs, we’ll have a better picture of how things are going: are they still making substantial trading losses, and are owners still needing to inject cash to keep the show on the road?
My hunch is that the picture we see won’t be a rosy one, and that elite English rugby still has a way to go before it’s out of the woods. In the meantime we can all, Genge included, express our sympathy for those players whose careers have been jeopardised as a result of the salary cap squeeze, but what’s the alternative?
There’s another aspect to this, and it’s the harsh side of elite sport. There are hundreds of excellent golfers and tennis players who desperately want to be on the PGA or ATP tours because that’s where the big money is, but they just aren’t quite good enough, and everyone in football and rugby knows about Academy casualties: there are a finite number of places, and not everyone can make it.
When a rebalancing takes place, as is happening in the Premiership right now, the number of slots is fewer than before, and that means some really good players are having to modify their aspirations, or maybe even accept that their career in professional rugby is over. It’s horrible for them, but that’s what elite means.
Sad though it is, if fewer elite rugby players is the price that must be paid for keeping the Premiership on the road, then it’s worth doing.