Wages soar as John Hall enters Premiership fray

NOBODY can accuse rugby’s transition from amateurism to professionalism of being smooth and trouble free. Indeed nearly 25 years on many of the issues remain.

The fateful decision by the IRB in Paris on August 26, 1995 still caught many by surprise. Some hadn’t read the signs – or turned a Nelsonian eye – while others staggered around in denial for a while missing a vital window of opportunity.

It was clear talking to the movers and shakers at the time that the original intention, driven by IRB chairman Vernon Pugh, below, was to generously reward international Test players for their huge efforts and to allow them to cash in commercially. That is exactly what the likes of Will Carling, Rob Andrew, Brian Moore and others had been campaigning for. Professionalism was to apply to the elite Test player.

Fatally, though, such thinking didn’t really incorporate the senior club scene, nor had it properly taken into account the sheer amount of TV and commercial money that was about to come on stream, especially in the southern hemisphere where the long term $550m Murdoch TV deals for the Tri Nations and Super 12 competition had just been put in place.

Clearly below that elite level of Test rugby players there had to be at least one other strata of professional player, namely the clubs that spawn those Test players. Rugby is the ultimate team game. Even the greatest player is nothing without his mates.

Rugby got this badly wrong. Take the RFU. Their initial reaction, while immediately making provision to pay Test players from November 95 onwards, was to put a one-year moratorium on clubs who were required to stay amateur until September 1996, making prudent arrangements in the meantime for the brave new world.

It was undue procrastination. Clubs, with a stronger grasp on reality, simply got busy signing up players on contracts and, in so doing, establishing their primacy of contract over the RFU and their international requirements, an ongoing issue that continues to bedevil the English game.

Worse still, the likes of Sir John Hall entered the market. He bought up Newcastle – then in Division Two – and his player coach Rob Andrew was given an open cheque book and started buying up players on lavish contracts to ensure they earned promotion first time out.

That drove the whole wage structure up and right from the off clubs were forced to pay more than they intended, or could afford, to keep key players and attract others. That implanted gremlins in the system right from the off and the on-going salary cap disputes have their origins here.

Speculative owners emerged. Ashley Levett at Richmond, Frank Warren at Bedford. They thought there was money to be made but there wasn’t.

One morning rugby woke up and they were gone with the clubs they left behind heading down the greasy pole.

Big clubs began to wobble and slide in England – Orrell, West Hartlepool, Richmond, Waterloo, Liverpool St Helens, Bedford, Coventry, London Scottish and Rugby – but this process was actually underway before the introduction of professionalism and perhaps we need to take a long view.

It should be noted that of the 12 teams that contested the first professional Courage League championship in 1996-97, ten are still contesting this season’s Gallagher’s Premiership. Despite all the turbulence, politics and noise that ensued has that much actually changed at all?

In Scotland and Wales came the initial agony over whether to invest in existing clubs or to go the district or regional route. In future years rugby fans will find odd mentions to a Highlands Caledonian team and the Border Rievers at the dawn of professionalism and scratch their heads.

Meanwhile, the argument still raises its head regularly in Wales over composite unloved regional franchises and the vibrant clubs the region once boasted. The eventual destruction of a brilliant ambitious club like Pontypridd, for example, was one of the greatest acts of vandalism the game has seen

Ireland was in a strong position with just three traditional powerhouse provinces the obvious professional entities plus unloved Connacht who initially the IRU wanted to ditch. Professional club rugby was ideal for France with its well-defined rugby towns and cities and associated clubs.

In the southern hemisphere the Murdoch millions initially made the switch less fraught – the costs of staging a Super Rugby competition could be met – but they couldn’t – and still don’t – disguise the fact that putting together a coherent domestic tournament across New Zealand, Australia and South Africa is not logical and extraordinary challenging. Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Japan and Argentina were ignored.

Rugby got a lot wrong in those early frantic years of professionalism but let’s end on a positive note. Just days after the official announcement from Paris, Heineken launched their European Cup for 12 clubs or provinces. England and Scotland – the awkward squad resisting professionalism the hardest – sat it out for the first season with the tournament being won by Toulouse at Cardiff Arms Park where they beat Cardiff in front of a modest 20,000 crowd.

The following season, though, all the major European nations were on board and the competition’s first great team emerged in Brive who produced rugby of rare quality in beating a stacked Leicester Tigers side in front of 40,000 fans, again with Cardiff hosting the tournament. A major success story was under way.