You have to feel for players after SRU pay cut faux pas

World Rugby, formerly the International Rugby Board, announced an £80 million relief fund amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.

The fund is designed to ease the financial pressure on the game across the globe.

World Rugby also indicated that there could be no further international rugby at all in 2020, which is very significant.

The SRU announced that it was taking radical steps to ease the potential burden on their finances by cutting contracted players’ salaries.

However, in bulldozing the scheme through, they have found themselves in the firing line of Rugby Players Scotland (RPS), the body set up to represent Scotland’s professional players.

One of their complaints was that details of the proposals for salary cuts was leaked, and they appeared on the BBC website before the players themselves had been briefed.

Such a public relations faux pas is almost unbelievable, and one feels for the players, who must have read about their salary sacrifices before hearing from their employer.

It doesn’t say much about the people-management skills at the SRU. But, there again, they have form on this subject.

It is staggering to note that the SRU has 157 contracted players. The deal that appears to have been forced through is that the highestpaid will take the greatest cut.

Those earning over £200,000 will lose 25% of their salaries and there is a sliding scale down to the players paid £75,000 losing 10%. Those earning less than £50,000 would not be affected.

Coupled with these measures, the SRU intend to furlough 75% of the remainder of their staff.

This is a harsh reminder of the commercial realities of this crisis and the most-significant impact on the SRU will be on its cash-flow.

Scottish Rugby was able to stage their two home internationals this year. But with doubt being cast over the autumn internationals, revenue from ticket sales will not be flooding in over the summer.

If the autumn internationals are cancelled, the SRU will lose £12m in revenue – not an insignificant amount. But this financial crisis in rugby is not restricted to Scotland.

Every country where the professional game is played is being hit, hence the very real and urgent need for the £80m that World Rugby are providing.

But this cannot be used to pay salaries alone.

Rugby has a chance to realign its global calendar amidst this crisis, and there are signs that World Rugby intends to make the most of this opportunity.

With global realignment and the sale of tournaments to CVC, rugby could look very different when the world eventually emerges from this current crisis.