WRAY’S WAY KEPT PLAYERS ONSIDE

NIGEL WRAY trashed the rules in his time as chairman of Saracens but at least he believed in paying players. The strong-arm tactics subsequently used to enforce wage cuts without consultation in Premiership Rugby makes Wray appear almost honourable by comparison. Premiership rugby clubs are lucky to be protected by RFU rules that state anyone playing outside this country cannot represent England. Take that away and there would be an exodus. Why would anyone want to play for this lot now unless they had to?

STEVE STAMMERS passed away last week. The many kind tributes described him as ‘old school’. In some ways, no doubt he was. Steve was a working-class grammar school boy who always wore a collar and tie to a game, his shoes were recently polished and he was unfailingly polite. Also, in his recent years as a freelance, he was of an age to draw a pension. Quite literally, that’s old school.

But what truly afforded Steve the term was that he knew people, and they trusted him, and then told him things which he could put on the back pages of newspapers.

Arsenal did not announce their new manager was Arsene Wenger in 1996; Steve did. And he alerted this newspaper to Wenger’s departure in 2018 too — the story he filed said ‘this week’ and it was announced on the Friday. He revealed Glenn Hoddle was leaving Swindon to manage Chelsea and he spoke fluent French, so that when the country’s players came here, he was better placed to befriend them than most of us.

He was funny too. In 2004, Rudi Voller named Germany’s European Championship squad. There were five forwards, including a Brazilian, a Slovenian and two Poles. Steve studied the news. ‘They seem to have given up on that master race idea,’ he deadpanned. Would that be allowed today? Yeah, he was old school. Rest well.