Smell of fear stifling Premiership growth
THE subject of salary caps and their desirability has been much discussed recently, mainly in connection with the relative failure of English clubs in Europe this season with no semi-finalists in the Champions Cup and no finalist in the Challenge Cup.
I’d be wary of making too much of that. England didn’t have any semi-finalists in the 2003 Heineken Cup either but as I recall the season went pretty well elsewhere and was generally considered a highwater mark for English rugby.
But diminished salary caps generally within the Premiership? At a time when a fully developed professional sport should be making bold strides forward? I vaguely get the theory for artificial restraint but I’m still not convinced, mainly because that attitude of fear and self-preservation can fatally undermine growth.
It’s stifling, an all too familiar example of a small, closed knit cartel running rugby to suit them. What new investors – and there are more cash rich billionaires out there than ever before it seems – will commit if their financial heft is not allowed to be a point of difference. Making everybody comply with the lowest common denominator is counter intuitive.
Among other things it sends out a negative message to the many talented young tyros considering their sporting options. At present, in the most basic terms, the permitted wage bill for Premiership squads is £5m p/a plus a marquee player. That’s roughly £100,000 a week plus the marquee player – let’s knock that total up to 120k a week – which is approximately the weekly
reward of one decent Premier League footballer.
Objectively that’s a ridiculously small amount especially given the workload expected of a professional rugby player and the constant risk of career ending and even life changing injuries. And that’s before the growing concern with head injuries, concussion and the possible onset of premature dementia. If you sit down and do the maths why would you play professional rugby?
The dragging of everybody down to the same level also confuses the general sporting public who see huge capacity crowds at Six Nations games and gala European occasions and virtually wall to wall TV coverage on the many platforms. Rugby seems big time but packs such a light punch financially.
Professional rugby struggled during Covid although in fairness in England at least it fared better than many with furlough and government handouts, grants and players taking wage cuts. But it has bounced back well, and we have seen very solid Premiership crowds this season.
Vibrant full houses at Quins most weeks, ditto Saracens, Saints, Exeter and Gloucester. Welford Road is often nudging 20,000; Bath have continued to largely fill The Rec despite a woeful season; London Irish are gathering pace at Brentford and Bristol have enjoyed some big Ashton Gate paydays. Sale and Newcastle struggled a bit but it was ever thus.
You do wonder why the Premiership clubs remain so chronically hard up, but my main point is that we are 25-plus
years into professional rugby and we are still lacking the big bucks, high profile, celebrity players that drive other sports, those aspirational figures and poster boys that can cut across the entire sporting community. The salary cap absolutely crushes that notion. We are depriving ourselves of “Super” clubs and “Super” players.
Back in 1995 when rugby did finally become professional the then IRB chairman Vernon Pugh often used the “you can’t be half pregnant” metaphor to explain why rugby simply had to fully adopt professionalism rather than the prevalent shamateurism. You can’t be half professional, rugby must embrace it totally with all the jeopardy of market forces.
But that’s exactly what professional rugby in England is not doing. I don’t doubt for a second that if you abolished the salary cap you could potentially see three or four biggish clubs slip down the pecking order but that’s always happened in rugby. There is an entire book devoted to the lost rugby clubs of London let alone England. It’s a perfectly natural evolutionary process.
We have 13 Premiership clubs with the vague promise of 14 if ever Prem Rugby decide they like the look of Championship winners but that’s too many. That’s unsustainable.
The Premiership should consist of ten clubs with 18 high profile games per club per season plus play-offs for the top four with perhaps slightly more kudos given to the Premiership Cup which can also offer up two or three more home games. European ties would obviously come on top of that.
The Premiership should also take the obvious step of incorporating the Championship into their organisation and that would also consist of ten clubs – those that have slipped down from the Premiership and who are looking to reboot and those Championship teams that remain ambitious with viable investors who are hungry for Premiership action. Those who can’t maintain a place in that top 20 will then find their natural homes in the pyramid
Non-negotiable automatic promotion and relegation would make it easier to find sponsors and investment for that last category of clubs and
the entire Championship would soon become a revved up league, with the gap to the Premiership not so gaping and the broadcasters back on board.
The Premiership and the RFU know all this but seem to have become paralysed with fear which doesn’t auger well.