Fans will remember the players who stayed loyal
This is a time when you have to try to find some positives somewhere, and as the clubs continue to attempt to re-sign players for the remainder of this season, maybe loyalty can be one of the plus points to emerge. Some clubs have finished the miserable task of agreeing pay cuts, and a few have even announced the shape and size of their squads, while others are clearly still struggling with it.
It’s easy to be critical of players who are trying to maximise their earnings, but while all of the usual caveats about short careers, and only being one bad step away from serious injury, apply, that shouldn’t stop us!
For supporters of the Premiership clubs the way that players have reacted to the crisis has been fascinating. I’m sure that no player ever thought they’d be asked to take a sizeable pay cut, but then again, not too many out there in the real world thought at the start of this year that they’d be furloughed, or even worse, lose their job.
When the clubs had to impose pay cuts, effectively it gave players the chance to opt out of their contracts and find a new club. Plenty chose to go along with the unpalatable reduction in their salary, and demonstrate their loyalty, but some walked away.
We can all think of players at ‘our’ clubs who have been plagued with injuries, but where the club has poured tens of thousands of pounds into their rehabilitation, and where the value for money equation would look pretty sick if it was done. Those players were under contract, the clubs wanted them back as soon as possible, so they kept investing in them. Now some of those players have simply walked away from their contracts for more money elsewhere, and it leaves a sour taste.
We’ve all seen them, the badge kissers, who in interviews praise the fans, telling us that their club has a special place in their hearts, and so on. Then when given the opportunity to demonstrate that loyalty, they were gone, as the Scots would put it, ‘like snaw aff a dyke’!
When this is over, as fans we should make sure that we applaud those players who took some personal financial pain and stuck with our club. As for those who decided to cut and run rather than share the pain and help their club out? Mercenaries is a strong word, but it might just be apposite.
There are some phrases that just jar when you hear them. A new one has appeared and it’s irritating the living daylights out of me! Twice in recent weeks I’ve read that ‘the primacy of international rugby should be established’.
The argument for international rugby taking priority over club rugby is a simplistic and a fatuous one. The unions get most of their money from Test matches, so obviously that makes those games more important than any others, doesn’t it? No it doesn’t.
The positions adopted by people in this debate tend to be cultural: if you come from England and France, where the unions and the leagues have found a way to co-exist relatively happily, then you understand that the two have a symbiotic relationship. In other countries it is different, and as an example, in Wales the union made a total horlicks of club rugby, has central contracts in place, and the only games that really attract a crowd are the internationals at the Principality Stadium, and the occasional local derby.
In 2018-19, the last full nonRWC season, England played seven home games at Twickenham, watched by roughly 550,000 people. In the same period around 2,000,000 attended Premiership games – and you tell me that international rugby should take primacy?
As we recover from the pandemic, money will be even more important than usual, but in France we recently saw that when the grown-ups sit around a table, it’s possible for the union and the clubs to strike a deal. The essence of a deal is that neither party is entirely happy, but both can live with it.
As for hoping World Rugby take a lead, that’s for the birds. They’ve never really understood club rugby, the fanaticism it engenders in supporters, or the ancient local rivalries that go back to when the game started – their interest is in the international game, and on trying to retain the power that they currently exercise. World Rugby are well past their sell-by date, and the last thing we need is anything that increases their power – leave the unions and the clubs to sort things out.