Fans need to buckle up for a bumpy ride
IT feels like the Gallagher Premiership is tottering a little right now and the actual rugby can't start soon enough but a couple of thoughts as various discussions continue between HMRC and the administrators at Wasps and Worcester, and frankly who knows where else. You suspect there is much frantic paddling going on under the surface at other clubs as well.
First, let's ponder, mischievously, the notion that those currently in the mire actually have the temerity to sit in judgement of those who have earned the right to join the Premiership but are denied on spurious ground criteria.
The Premiership always has been a financial basket case and the idea that they should effectively be judge and jury as to who is and isn’t fit to contest Premiership rugby is a tad risible.
And if criteria is their thing, they should shine a harsher spotlight on their own accounts. And perhaps have the courage of their convictions and make them available to the public every year. Not least a breakdown of their salary cap expenditure would be nice.
But let’s also try and be fair here, we all love this game and wish it well.
Rugby's core problem is not lavish expenditure, it’s income. Rugby if anything is penny pinching to a fault although the first few clubs out of the blocks in 1996 - not least Newcastle - did skew the market for a while before reality set in.
Take the current reduced £5m salary cap plus say another £1.5m for a marquee player - that gives you a total of roughly £6.5m to employ 40+ elite sportsmen. In Premiership football £6.5m is what a middling reserve midfielder can earn at some clubs.
All the contracted players in Premiership Rugby are intrinsically worth double or triple what they actually earn when you consider the tenmonth season, their relative excellence compared with paid professionals in other sports and the ever-present threat of career-ending injuries. Other than one or two largely superfluous data bods, I don’t really see where elite ruby in England can trim down much further in terms of personnel and wages.
The truth is Rugby simply hasn’t found its pot of gold yet and its fans base is still narrowly defined and for me the game’s near obsession with careers after rugby and the training to achieve these, is a significant “tell”in this respect. Although player welfare post retirement is important, when you are a professional you dilute that consuming desire to be successful in your current job at your peril.
When push comes to shove do you slot in extra lineout and passing drills, or much needed rehab? Or do you learn how to become a barista or start prepping for those accountancy exams? When you have a day off do you enjoy a proper rest day like professional athletes and cyclists? Or do you dash around setting up a small retail business or working for those extra qualifications?
That isn’t a criticism as such, the reality is that only a minute percentage of rugby players earn life changing wages. They are poorly rewarded because the money simply isn’t there and must make plans accordingly, and top of that list is finding a way of making a living when they retire.
Other things puzzle me. These state-of-the-art training facilities and gyms that now seem de riguer. Wasps once ruled England and Europe from a dusty old gym with mice under the floorboards and starlings in the roof. The juxtaposition of Wasp's current financial issues with the opening of their £4m Elite Performance and Innovation Centre at Henley on Arden last September seems odd to say the least. Accountants will no doubt argue they are not related but it's the perception that is confusing and the priorities that seem to hold sway.
What club rugby has never cracked is generating the income it needs. Of course, one of the main reasons for that is the monopoly the big self-serving unions have over the big earning international games and tournaments and that frankly is down to the game’s complicated and sometimes unfathomable history. If you were starting from scratch you would never organise elite rugby around the current financial model.
And there have been some strange calls over the years. As well as a League, English rugby used to have an annual club knockout competition that filled Twickenham for the final in May, a competition that also generated much income in the latter stages. That was left to wither in the belief that an expanded 12-team Premiership was the only way forward.
European Club Rugby used to have a full bore Heineken Cup competition that was the envy of the world, not the confusing dog’s dinner it is now.
Even when that once-splendid tournament was growing, clubs voted to move it from terrestrial to satellite TV, almost killing at birth the growth burst for the game that you might have expected post RWC2003. With new English club fans chomping at the bit they discovered the world's premier club competition was no longer accessible to them on the BBC.
Back at the birth of professionalism, the broadcasters couldn’t believe how little they were required to pay for Premiership rugby rights. For the initial Sky Premiership deal the broadcasting giants had allocated a war chest twice as much as the amount that was finally negotiated. All their Christmases came at once while it also set the bar way too low for future negotiations with them and BT Sport who stepped into the breach later on.
Rugby hasn’t sold itself the way it should. Rugby stars used to be easily accessible but now they are often locked away at their new training centres. There are very few characters to relate to and engage with. That’s how you grow and maintain the local support base. Journalistically, there was five times more access in the amateur days than there is now which is just a complete nonsense.
When I started out, back in the old amateur days, every club seemed to have two or three savvy businessmen pulling strings and setting the club in the right direction. Ditto the RFU. Rugby had an enviable contacts book groaning with blue chip captains of industry and worked those contacts hard.
The game appeared to have battalions of influential friends in high places. It was the sport of choice of the managerial and entrepreneurial class yet many of these figures have just vanished. What is it that rugby has failed to consistently deliver for them, I wonder.
The involvement of venture capitalists is a sure sign they believe the sport was/is massively underperforming and ready for a takeover and corporate makeover. Instinctively, I rage against such a notion.There is so much still to enjoy about modern rugby for the committed but these guys have computers for brains and, like the bookies, are usually right. Rugby generally and English club rugby definitely, is entering a turbulent phase again. Buckle up.