Newcastle open to taking Saudi cash as cuts loom
Bottom side explore link-up with football club owners Falcons set to axe up to 20 players from 50-plus squad
Newcastle Falcons are considering Saudi Arabian investment as they prepare to make swingeing cuts to their squad.
The Gallagher Premiership’s bottom club are preparing to lose up to 20 players over the next fortnight to stabilise their financial position. However, Saudi investment could be on the horizon, according to Steve Diamond, the club’s consultant director of rugby.
“Our owner, Semore Kurdi, has been to meet various dignitaries from Saudi Arabia with a view to Newcastle assisting them to build a rugby academy over there to attract sevens competitions. They are coming to either the Leicester, Bath or Sale game to get a feel for it,” Diamond said. “It’s early days, but that will hopefully result in some sort of partnership. Fingers crossed.”
The kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund already owns Newcastle United. Diamond said: “If the owners of Newcastle United wanted to invest in Newcastle rugby, I’m sure we’d all listen. One of their players’ salaries would potentially enable us to win the competition.”
The Saudi ministry of education added rugby to the PE curriculum this month. Sevens is a particular focus as it is an Olympic discipline, but exploratory discussions have been held over potential investment in the Premiership.
Without it, Newcastle are resigned to cutting back even further. They already operate on the smallest budget in the Premiership and have been kept afloat by Kurdi, a Jordanian businessman with a passion for rugby, since 2011.
“It’s nothing like a Worcester or a London Irish situation. There’s no fear of it going like the others have gone, but, equally, the investor wants to run it as economically as he can while still being competitive. What we are working through at the moment is how to run it as sustainably as possible,” said Diamond, who takes charge of his first Premiership game with the club at Exeter tomorrow.
“Currently, the squad, with the academy, is 50-plus, and that is going to be whittled down to 34, so you don’t have to have a first in maths to work out there will be 15 to 20 players leaving. That’s for two reasons. One, I don’t think they are good enough to get to the standard we want, and two, the financial position dictates that we’re going to spend 50 per cent of what the rest will be spending.
“I’ve told the lads that we will get these next two games out of the way and then will sit down and be honest and direct with them.
“It’s unfair because people have families and this is their livelihood. It’s the dirty end of the stick. There will be some people who will be upset, some people who expect it, but we need to give them as much opportunity as possible to get another contract if it’s not with Newcastle.”
Nor is the coaching staff safe. They are on trial, too. “If you have an inexperienced team scrapping at the bottom of the league then your coaching has to be bang on,” Diamond said. “They have some really good quality staff here. The jury is out on one or two. This period will be an opportunity to show their wares and deliver their message.”
Diamond believes that even without Saudi investment, a makedo-and-mend model can be competitive. It is the same one he employed during his early years at Sale when the Sharks consistently confounded financial reality.
“There are a lot of parallels,” he said. “What we have to do is outperform the other teams on recruitment and have a sharp academy. We can do that.”
In the short term, he is hands-on at training, with an emphasis on what the former hooker refers to as “legal violence”. A friendly victory at Sale during the Premiership’s hiatus suggests his methods are making an impact. “You can’t just employ thuggery – we need some skill and guile – but you can make up for a lack of quality with endeavour,” he said.
“Albeit it was a friendly, but we delivered a really gutsy performance at Sale. Over the last couple of years Newcastle have lost the fight and we didn’t this time. It sets us up well for Exeter.”
With six matches left, Newcastle are fighting to save face. They could become the first team since London Welsh in 2014-15 to end a season without winning a league game. “That is not going to happen,” Diamond
insisted.