The first-floor concourse within the west stand at Twickenham has obviously no longer been swept for some time. The native pigeons have spent the summer season roosting overhead and, out of doors the shuttered Thirst bar, vital tons of grey-white droppings are piling up. Sadly, it isn’t even on the subject of being the largest mess in English rugby, with a gradual torrent of poisonous information nonetheless pounding down on deficient, cash-starved Worcester.
Watching issues cross pear-shaped in a proud Premiership heartland isn’t how any person desires to begin a glittery new rugby union season. Which is a crying disgrace in itself. It would were beautiful to have spent extra time discussing rugby at Thursday’s season release: whether or not Leicester can win back-to-back titles, whether or not Bath will in any case get away the trough of melancholy or whether or not one of the most league’s precocious younger ability can kick on once more .
But that might be to forget about the onrushing monetary bull elephant within the room. The Guardian has spoken to a number of resources who say virtually part of the 13 Premiership golf equipment are both closely in debt or have an proprietor who’s probably at risk of shedding religion. The curse of Covid has speeded up the location but it surely has additionally uncovered issues that experience existed for ages.
Sometimes it feels as though membership rugby has been below the cosh for nearly so long as Steve Wright has been webhosting his afternoon display on BBC radio. And the factoids are getting worse. Did you already know that Worcester are over £20m in debt? Or that power expenses at each membership stadium are taking a look set to quadruple?
Everything is relative, after all. Those folks sufficiently old to keep in mind what it was once like within the Premiership’s earliest days, with mismatches not unusual and crowds regularly modest, can ascertain the product is as aggressive and bubbling because it has ever been. Harlequins’ Tabai Matson, who has coached broadly, thinks likewise: “I truly believe it’s the toughest competition in the world.”
The threat, after all, is that the gloom-laden speak about Worcester morphs right into a self-fulfilling prophecy for all the league. “The fact is we have a massive market opportunity with club rugby,” insists Simon Massie-Taylor, Premiership Rugby’s leader govt. “There are nine million rugby fans in England and in club rugby we have a relatively small proportion of that. We believe that given the quality of the product we can attract more people to it.”
But who and what will people be watching in a few years’ time? An emaciated Premiership, a cannibalised Championship, fewer professional clubs with less central funding? For a snapshot of English rugby’s current disconnect you need only wander into the Twickenham shop, now contracted out from the Rugby Football Union. Pretty much every item on sale has a rose emblazoned on it; go in search of club-related merchandise and you will struggle. Which, ironically, reinforces Massie-Taylor’s stat and makes it harder still to win floating hearts and minds.
Meanwhile, across the Channel, the Top 14 continues to grow in popularity, with next year’s World Cup in France offering another springboard to even greater prominence. Yes, there are crucial differences in the French model, not least the public funding of club stadiums. But the point is that club rugby is generating big bucks in a way that British club rugby, as things stand, is not.
Which means hard choices are needed. Either the sport must cut its cloth, argues Steve Diamond, Worcester’s director of rugby, or it has to change its mindset radically. “It’s about where we want to take the sport. If we want big investors from other parts of the world then they’ll want superstar players. They’ve got to look at how they finance that.” In the shorter time period this is obviously going to be tough. “I think if you had the owners in here and I was one of them I’d be saying keep the salary cap as it is for five years, definitely.”
Some of Diamond’s proposed savings will send a shiver down the spines of his counterparts. “The days have gone, in my opinion, where you can have a director of rugby and a head coach. You’ve got two people doing one job, so you’ve got to amalgamate it. Do you need forwards coaches, defense coaches and lots of other coaches? Do you need three people in the media department? We have got to look at that, as well as how many players you need.” As he told BBC 5 live, doing nothing no longer feels like an option. ‘We need a solution because none of the clubs are making money. Worcester are just first in the line of being exposed to the frailties of professional sport after the pandemic.”
It is hard to disagree. One or two England internationals might dispute Diamond’s pithiest soundbite – “A top-class rugby union player is a Coronation Street actor compared to a Premiership footballer who is a Hollywood star” – but it is true for the vast majority. And with everyone’s disposable income set to fall, this year’s early-season attendance figures are going to be watched more intently than ever.
Even that assumes that everyone can afford to keep their floodlights on as the wintry, recession-darkened nights draw in. The bigger headache, though, is the relationship between club rugby’s income and player expenditure. Cutting the salary cap to £5m from £6.4m has been some help – Diamond reckons a properly-run club should now be able to break even on 6,000 crowds – but also risks some possible side effects. At what point do the game’s top players, with their domestic salaries falling, start being courted by investors less interested in, say, propping up Worcester than in some kind of global super league?
The resolution, as ever, lies in reorganizing and dovetailing the home and world fixture lists. Less is extra, if no longer in each recognize. This season, as an example, England squad regulars may just pass over part their membership’s Premiership video games. Much additionally rests at the phrases of any new long-term deal between the golf equipment and the RFU, with the prevailing eight-year settlement set to expire in 2024. Never has there been a more potent case, theoretically, for central contracts. Then once more, simply consider if Marcus Smith begins enjoying for Harlequins as hardly ever as Jonny Bairstow seems for Yorkshire? What a recreation changer that might be. But one thing has to present or cleansing up after Twickenham’s resident pigeons will quickly be the least of rugby’s issues.
