Bristol utilise ‘shrinking middle’ to fund star signings
How the side Saracens face tomorrow stick within the salary cap. By Charlie Morgan
At the end of last month, a few hours after Bristol Bears had announced the stunning signing of Fiji international Semi Radradra on a three-year deal, Pat Lam, the director of rugby, presided over a bustling press day at Clifton RFC.
Understandably, given the news of Saracens’ salary cap scandal had broken just a few weeks previously, many questions centred around the financial intricacies of Bristol’s squad.
After all, the Premiership salary cap is due to remain at £6.4million for a fourth consecutive campaign in 2020-21, with up to an additional £600,000 dealt to each club for fielding academy players under the age of 24.
A man of immense integrity, Lam is always generous with his insight. He confirmed that Radradra, who lit up the World Cup, would join from Bordeaux Begles as one of Bristol’s marquee players. Every club can nominate two men whose wages are excluded from that season’s cap.
Lam went further, too. He insisted that he had found the cap “really easy” to negotiate. Then he was almost too honest. In a remarkable soliloquy, he reeled off no fewer than 22 players that fell into one of two camps. Either Lam had recruited them opportunistically on cut-price offers, or they had been on money that reflected their place on the periphery of the first team.
They ranged from fly-half
Callum Sheedy – “he was sent on loan to Jersey Reds and was third-choice 10 at the club” – to back-rower Luke Hamilton. “I picked him up when he was working in a restaurant in Wales.”
In each case, the implication was clear. These individuals were not big earners, leaving space in the salary cap for fatter contracts.
Inadvertently, Lam’s quotes also reinforced a pattern among England’s top-tier squads: the shrinking middle.
Esportif Intelligence is the data division of the player management company Esportif. According to its research, average Premiership salaries have risen steadily since 2017-18, despite the salary-cap fix. The cash injection from CVC Capital Partners is just one reason for this. However, the share of individuals commanding a middle-ranking salary of £70,000£140,000 has dropped.
In 2016-17, this bracket accounted for 39 per cent of the league’s players. This season, it is just 23 per cent. Over the same period, the total share of senior players earning between £30,000 and £69,000 per year has risen from 22 per cent to 32 per cent.
The average age of players within the £70,000-£140,000 band has dropped from 27 to 26. There is a heightened emphasis on developing young talent, as a significant hike of upgrades from academy to senior contracts illustrates. Ahead of 2019-20, 71 of these promotions occurred across the Premiership. The previous year it was just 33.
Continuing to use Bristol as an example, Lam mentioned that an impressive academy system, producing starlets such as 20-yearold hooker Will Capon and sparky teenage playmaker Ioan Lloyd, would bring wriggle-room.
Having said that, Mark Mccall highlighted the difficulty of re-signing his stellar crop of home-grown Saracens, Owen Farrell and Maro Itoje among them, on the back of the 2017 British and Irish Lions tour. When a core of club players progress to Test level together, things get expensive. Wage demands quickly consume £600,000 of academy credits.
The squeeze on middle-earning squad players, often the honest grafters who need to step up during international periods, is coming from both above and below. Concerns have been raised at players’ board meetings of the Rugby Players’ Association.
“What we recognised last season was more senior Premiership players without a contract, or with their contract values cut, than ever before,” says Rich Bryan, the RPA’S player welfare director.
“We were able to speak to
players and help them recognise that competition for contracts is probably greater than ever before, so to be prepared for career transitions.”
Ultimately, a canny coaching set-up will trust its on-field methods to polish rough diamonds. But that must go hand-in-hand with sufficiently strong leadership to protect dressing room unity from jealousy and animosity.
“All the best stories in life about successful people are about what they had to do when they were down to come back up,” explained Lam this week. “Those are the people you are looking for because they are fighters who won’t quit. Then, if they’re coachable, you will get a bit of magic.”
Clearly, such magic can help players enhance their value. But climbing the wage structure towards a shrinking middle must be a daunting experience.