HISTORIC NEW RUGBY DEAL AGREED
Ahistoric new deal that will change the face of Welsh rugby has been agreed. The WRU are ready to announce the implementation of Project Reset, which will bring in a new funding model for the professional game and alter the way players are paid.
Players will now be placed into specific pay bands in an effort to curb wage inflation, with some members of the Welsh Rugby Players Association (WRPA) unhappy with the new contractual model put together by the regions and the Welsh Rugby Union.
There had been talk of potential industrial action, but that has now disappeared with an agreement having been struck. Wales’ Lions stars could still earn up to about £450,000 a year, but a low-ranked regional player may only get around £25,000.
Potential glitches in the deal have been ironed out in an attempt to reduce player unrest and ensure enough money is available to fill problem positions at the regions.
Existing contracts will be honoured but there will be casualties among players whose current deals run out at the end of the campaign.
It’s understood Scott Baldwin is an example of a big name who could suffer financially.
The hooker shone at the 2015 World Cup but injuries knocked his form and he has slid down the pecking order and out of Warren Gatland’s squad.
He’s is coming off a National Dual Contract and is unlikely to be in a band high enough to get a similar deal in Wales if he doesn’t make national coach Gatland’s party for the Six Nations. His club Ospreys are likely to offer him a regional deal but rivals Cardiff Blues are keen on obtaining his services.
There’s still scope for one region to offer more money than the other, as long as it is within the parameters of the wage band a player falls into.
With there being a vast difference between the bottom and top figures in each category, a player could still pick up considerably more by joining another region.
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AN historic new deal that will change the face of Welsh rugby has been agreed.
The Welsh Rugby Union are ready to announce the implementation of Project Reset, which will bring in a new funding model for the professional game and alter the way players are paid.
Players will now be placed into specific pay bands in an effort to curb wage inflation, leaving some members of the Welsh Rugby Players’ Association (WRPA) unhappy with the new contractual model put together by the regions and the WRU.
There had been talk of potential industrial action, but that has now disappeared with an agreement having been struck.
Wales’s Lions stars could still earn up to about £450,000 a year, but a low-ranked regional player may only get around £25,000.
Potential glitches in the deal have been ironed out in an attempt to reduce player unrest and ensure enough money is available to fill problem positions at the regions.
Existing contracts will be honoured but there will be casualties among players whose current deals run out at the end of the campaign.
It’s understood Scott Baldwin is an example of a big name who could suffer financially.
The hooker shone at the 2015 World Cup but injuries knocked his form and he has slid down the pecking order and out of Warren Gatland’s squad.
He’s is coming off a national dual contract (NDC) and is unlikely to be in a band high enough to get a similar deal in Wales if he doesn’t make national coach Gatland’s party for the Six Nations.
His club the Ospreys are likely to offer him a regional deal but rivals Cardiff Blues are keen on obtaining his services.
There’s still scope for one region to offer more money than the other, as long as it falls within the parameters of the wage band into which a player falls.
With there being a vast difference between the bottom and top figures in each category, a player could still pick up considerably more by joining another region.
The new deal is all part of Project Reset, which is set to change the game in Wales for ever.
It will be called the Professional Rugby Agreement (PRA) and will replace the Rugby Services Agreement (RSA) following long and detailed negotiations.
The central element of the new plan is how the five entities — the WRU, the WRU-owned Dragons and the other three regions — can work together for the betterment of the professional game and put them on a firmer financial footing.
Under the RSA between the WRU and the regions, the basic principle had been equal distribution, with all four regions getting the same.
This new deal is about equal opportunity, with the regions being rewarded for performances both on and off the field and for delivering players to the Wales set-up.
The Scarlets, Cardiff Blues and the Ospreys last season shared £20.6m, according to the WRU’s 2018 annual report, which worked out at about £6.86m each if shared equally, from the union. The Dragons received £6m from a separate pot.
An improved funding arrangement was actually put into place for this season with an additional £2.4m being shared by the Scarlets, Blues and Ospreys.
The Scarlets, who have been the most successful with a PRO12 title in 2017, a PRO14 final and European Champions Cup semi-final appearances last season and a large contingent of players in the Wales squad, got the biggest share, with the Blues and Ospreys receiving an equal increase.
It’s understood the under-performing Dragons didn’t get an increase as the Union had covered debts incurred over the past year.
Under the PRA, the Scarlets will continue to have the biggest playing budget, with the figure expected to be around the £7.3m mark for next season, in an effort to improve the competitiveness of the Welsh regions in Europe and the PRO14.
As part of the deal, each region is believed to have laid out their potential goals for next season, with the Scarlets targeting winning the Heineken Champions Cup.
The Blues, following their lifting of Europe’s second-tier Challenge Cup and qualifying for this campaign’s Champions Cup, will be handed the next biggest budget, followed by the Ospreys, with the pair hovering either side of £7m. It’s believed the Dragons will be on just over £6m.
Every year the situation will be reviewed and payments will be based on how the regions are delivering.
A new Professional Rugby Board, featuring one representa-
tive from each region, two from the WRU (probably chief executive Martyn Phillips and finance director Steve Phillips) plus two independents, will be set up to run the game and look at ways of funding it.
They will operate as one entity to make savings on things like supplies and when it comes to bringing in sponsorship and commercial revenue.
Part of the agreement is that the PRA should be a completely fresh start.
As such, one of the requirements has been that the regional balance sheets should be cleaned up.
We have seen that happening at Cardiff Blues, where Peter Thomas has written off the estimated £14m he has poured into the business over the years and stepped down as chairman as part of the governance reform.
At the Scarlets, it’s understood directors’ loans totalling more than £8m have been converted into shares.
There’s been concern from some that cash from benefactors – the regions have relied heavily on the likes of Thomas (Blues), a number of funding directors at the Scarlets, Roger Blyth, Robert Davies and previously Mike Cuddy at the Ospreys and Martyn Hazell and Tony Brown at the Dragons to prop them up — will disappear.
But a regional source said: “That doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. If so-called existing benefactors or new people want to put in money there are other ways of doing it, with sponsorship being an obvious route.”
WRU chief executive Martyn Phillips, writing in his organisation’s annual report, said: “The purpose of the project is to implement a strategy whereby the five professional entities (Wales and the four regions) work together to ensure that, to borrow from Aristotle, ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’.
“The key principles are increased collaboration from a rugby and commercial perspective and to share to drive productivity improvements.
“We will collaborate effectively and find a way to work more closely whilst still preserving the identity and tribalism necessary.
“The challenge will be to preserve the fundamental elements of our sport, which pit us, necessarily, against each other in competition at different times, during this collaboration process, but I am confident this can be achieved,” he added.
“We are also very conscious that we need to improve the connection between community and professional rugby at a local level – this is a key ambition of this project.”