Always a Wasp

RFU and Premiership agree landmark ?264m PGP deal in principle to align English rugby

Exclusive: ?Truly historic? agreement includes new hybrid contracts for England players aimed at stemming exodus to France
Gavin Mairs, Chief Rugby Union Correspondent 29 April 2024 ? 2:29pm
 


A landmark professional game partnership (PGP) has been agreed in principle between the Rugby Football Union and Premiership Rugby, Telegraph Sport understands.

The deal, which will be worth more than ?264 million to England?s leading clubs over the next eight years, is currently going through legal procedures and checks to iron out the final details, and, without any last-minute hitches, an official announcement is expected ahead of the June deadline, when the current eight-year deal expires.

The deal will include confirmation of the introduction of new England hybrid contracts, first revealed by Telegraph Sport last October, with up to 25 enhanced elite player squad (EPS) contracts to be offered to players next season.

    Game-changing deal could solve club-v-country dispute

It had been hoped that an agreement would be in place by December of last year. England captain Jamie George and Maro Itoje have already signed contract extensions with Saracens after being offered, in principle, enhanced EPS deals, which replace the ?20,000 match fee system with a guaranteed lump sum of around ?160,000 per season.

The additional upfront salary is designed to help keep players in England ? and eligible for international selection ? with a growing number leaving the Premiership to play in France, including Owen Farrell, Manu Tuilagi and Kyle Sinckler.

The deal will also overhaul the management of the players, with England head coach Steve Borthwick and his coaching team able to lay out long-term strength and conditioning and skill development programmes for the players, and they will also have a final say in medical decisions as part of a new integrated approach.

Ellis Genge, the England prop, and former national team-mate Jonny May last week expressed doubts about the progress of the hybrid contracts, while Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall called for clarity on the situation.

However, it is understood that an agreement has been reached which will now allow for the final details of those contracts to be thrashed out between the RFU and Team England Rugby Ltd, the body that split from the Rugby Players Association, with Borthwick set to confirm the enhanced EPS contracts ahead of the autumn Tests as originally planned.

?This will be a truly historic moment,? said one source. ?The last deal was purely transactional. For the first time, this feels genuinely like a joint venture. The RFU and the Premiership clubs have never been this aligned before.?


Game-changing deal could solve English rugby?s longstanding problem

By Gavin Mairs

The negotiations began in the dark days of the financial catastrophe created by the pandemic, but it now appears that the sunlit uplands of a ?historic? solution to the club-versus-country dispute that has undermined English rugby for three decades is finally in reach.

?It is all about trust and a collaborative approach that was not there during Eddie Jones?s tenure,? said a senior club source. ?The goal is to create a shared vision for the performance aspect of elite rugby.?

For that to happen, both sides have conceded ground to some extent. The clubs are giving England more control of the management of their players, but the backstop will come in the form of a new beefed-up professional game board, that will include an independent chair and independent directors to hold Steve Borthwick to proper account rather than the lip service that was paid to post-tournament reviews by his predecessor Jones.

It may not go as far as the central contract model that has underpinned Ireland?s success in the last decade, but for the first time, sources say club and country will be aligned to improve the national team?s performance.

Underpinning the new deal and providing a level of security and stability for the Premiership clubs will be an enhanced financial package worth about ?132 million (?33 million per season) from the RFU to the 10 clubs for the first four years.

It represents a major uplift to the current level of funding (a share of the RFU revenue, which falls significantly in a World Cup year) and will offset the five per cent (?5.5 million pro rata) fall in broadcasting revenues with the new two-year deal with TNT Sports next season. The previous deal is thought to have been worth ?110 million over three years.

It had been hoped that the agreement would have been reached before last Christmas, but one of the key sticking points of the final round of negotiations was funding for the second half of the agreement.

The 2016 deal, worth ?225 million, fixed the first four-year payment to the clubs at ?112 million, with the second four-year payment based on a percentage of the RFU?s revenues. It proved costly for both parties, with over-optimistic revenue forecasts forcing the RFU to shed jobs in 2018, while the collapse of revenue during the Covid years hit the club finances.

A compromise has been reached now with the second four years moving to a split of the RFU?s profits, with the guarantee of a minimum return to the clubs, to underscore the motivation for the clubs and governing body to work together. Projections for the governing body?s revenues are expected to rise with the establishment of the Nations Championship in 2026.

?Everyone will be incentivised to ensure the RFU is in good financial health and delivering a commercial plan,? said another source.

We have, of course, been here before. Those of us old enough to remember the ?Leicester? and ?Mayfair? agreements in the late 1990s and ?Long Form? agreement of 2000, all of which failed to bring peace between the two warring factions, will no doubt regard with a dose of scepticism talk of a mutually beneficial collaboration.

The last two eight-year deals (Heads of Agreement in 2008 and Professional Game Agreement in 2016) promised as much but flattered to deceive, with RFU chief executive Bill Sweeney admitting two years ago that ?everyone is fed up? with the current English structure.

It must also be stated that the RFU and Premiership Rugby have yet to resolve their differences with the Championship clubs, particularly over removing the barriers to restoring the genuine possibility of promotion and relegation and the future structure of the second tier.

Yet the devastating impact of Covid, and the subsequent loss of four professional clubs, appears to have provided the fertile ground for a genuine reset in relations between the RFU and the Premiership. The dire financial reality, aggravated by England?s poor performances on the pitch, forced everyone?s hands.

Even so, when the negotiations first began two years ago, such a collaborative approach was far from guaranteed.

?I have sat in meetings where owners of certain clubs have said that our biggest competitor is the RFU,? said another source. ?One of the positives of this process is that sentiment has dropped away and it does seem as though there is genuine alignment that will allow elite rugby to thrive in the future.?

It is said the intervention of the Government last September acted as a catalyst for agreement to be reached, although it is understood that hopes of restructuring of the Covid loans will not be applied to all 10 clubs.

?In the last year real trust has been built,? said a senior club source. ?I think people have realised that the only way for England and the clubs to be successful is to work together.?

Key to this transformation has been Simon Massie-Taylor, the Premiership Rugby chief executive who was previously chief commercial and marketing officer at the RFU and his relationship with Sweeney, who has dedicated his tenure to driving the deal to improve the national performance systems and English structure. The pair also worked together previously at the British Olympic Association.

Phil Winstanley, the rugby director at Premiership Rugby, is also said to have played a key role along with his RFU counterpart Conor O?Shea, in visiting all the clubs to establish the core principles of the new deal, while Borthwick is also said to have had a key input in raising the areas of improvement required to enhance England?s elite programme.

Sources say Bruce Craig, the Bath owner, Chris Booy, the Bristol chair and Semore Kurdi, the Newcastle owner, have also been key influencers in the negotiations.

All club chief executives and directors of rugby are said to have had at least three face-to-face meetings on an individual club basis around the core principles while the RFU council has been regularly updated.

Those involved believe the new deal will be a game-changer, both improving the performance of England and the Premiership clubs, while making the domestic game more attractive to investors.

That remains to be seen, but for the first time since the game turned professional in 1995, the collaboration between club and country finally appears to be genuine.

Personally I can't blame the players at Sarries for the cheating. They were told it was all above board, how were they to know?
Unpopular opinion on here I know. Don't care

Just don't believe it in some cases.

"The first taser hit his wallet"

Hilarious, only a Sarries players wallet would be so stuffed with cash it would stop a tasering!

Quote from: InBetweenWasp on April 29, 2024, 10:24:49 AM

So far on our little on-the-road-tour of watching rugby post-Wasps, Bath and Saints have to be our favourite venues.  Still trying to work out getting out to see Toulouse and Pau play.

If the weather is fine, The Rec is comfortably the best place I have been to watch Premiership Rugby

IF - seem to remember Wasps always attracted wetness!

If anyone's interested, here's the report in today's Telegraph.

Billy Vunipola was tasered and arrested in a Spanish bar in the early hours of Sunday morning.
The England and Saracens No 8 was held overnight by police and fined for disobedience and assaulting a police officer.
The incident took place in a bar in Palma called Epic, with extraordinary CCTV footage showing a topless, laughing Vunipola, 31, surrounded by officers and the bar?s security after the area was cleared by police.
Vunipola played for Saracens on Friday night and was in Majorca as part of a team social for players and management because Saracens have a week off given that they are not part of this coming weekend?s European semi-finals.
Vunipola, who is 6ft 2in and weighs more than 20 stone, required a second taser volt in order to be handcuffed by eight police officers at around 4.30am on Sunday morning, after the first volt hit his wallet. He was later taken to nearby Son Espases Hospital where he was reportedly sedated and bound to his bed surrounded by hospital guards and police officers.
Vunipola: ?Unfortunate misunderstanding?
A spokesman for the National Police of Majorca stated that ?security staff were unable to restrain him or remove him from the premises?, which led to police being called before Vunipola ?pushed and slapped an officer?.
In a statement released on Monday, Vunipola said: ?I can confirm I was involved in an unfortunate misunderstanding when I was leaving a club in Mallorca on Sunday, which got out of hand. Contrary to media reports, there was no violence, no fight and I did not threaten anybody at any stage, with bottles or chairs or anything else. I was charged with resisting the law and, following an ?express trial, I have paid a fine of ?240. The Spanish police investigation is now closed, and I am flying back to the UK today. I will obviously cooperate with the Saracens internal process and unreservedly apologise for any inconvenience to all involved.?
Bar owner: ?Situation was getting tense?
The bar?s owner, Toni Rocha, praised the police and his doormen for dealing with a ?very difficult? and ?very tense? situation, while backing up Vunipola?s statement that there was no violence and denying that Vunipola had threatened customers and staff with bottles and chairs.
Rocha said that Vunipola had arrived at the bar at around 3am with another player which Telegraph Sport believes to be prop Marco Riccioni.
?It was just Billy and his friend but when they ordered the first round they asked for six Amarettos with orange juice and freshly squeezed lime,? Rocha said. ?I know because I served them. I?m pretty sure they drank them between the two of them, with Billy having four and the friend the other two.
?The friend was fine but Billy started becoming a problem as he became drunker. I had to ask him to put his top on at one point when he took it off while he was at the bar.
?He didn?t threaten customers or staff with bottles or bar stalls or anything like that but he was annoying other customers by pushing them, not in a violent way, but elbowing them and bothering them.
?He put his shirt on when I asked him to first time round. His friend who was co-operative at all times helped him put it back on. But then he took it off a second time and then a third and we decided to call police.
?I?d already got the doormen involved to try to get him to leave and his friend was assisting us but there was just no way we could get him to abandon the premises and the situation was becoming very tense and we saw we were going to have a problem if we tried to use physical force to get him out. I warned his friend I was going to call police and he said: ?Do what you have to do.?
?We thought he was going to calm down when he saw uniformed officers arrive but when the first police appeared on the scene he confronted them and they had to call for back-up.
?It was around 4am and we still had more than an hour left before we were supposed to close. When the back-up arrived the police told us to clear the bar, put the lights on and cut the music.
?The rugby player reacted by confronting the officers when they went to talk to him and insult them. I heard him saying ?f------ cops?. He also hit one of them with his shirt in his hand.
?They tried to get him out and couldn?t until they tasered him. He laughed the first time they went to taser him, it was like a film, and I heard the words ?Another one? and the second time round he fell to the ground and the officers immobilised him and put wrist-ties on him.?
Summing up the incident, Rocha added: ?It could have turned out very different and ended very badly because we were dealing with a strong man who was very drunk and was acting inappropriately and refusing requests for him to leave. We felt things could have got broken or he could have assaulted someone if we tried to force him out.
?I didn?t feel frightened, it was more a feeling of impotence that we couldn?t get him to abandon the premises. But some clients, especially women clients, were feeling frightened and very uncomfortable.?
Police: Second taser shot ?did the job?
The full statement from a police spokesman read: ?In the early hours of [Sunday] morning, at 4.30am, we arrested a 31-year-old foreign man on suspicion of a crime of disobedience and assaulting a police officer.
?The events took place in a leisure establishment on the seafront in Palma, when a man was causing altercations inside the establishment.
?The man would not listen to reason and confronted the rest of the customers, and the security staff were unable to restrain him or remove him from the premises.
?The police were alerted and the officers, on seeing the man, who was shirtless and making gestures with his hands, cleared the premises. It was then that he confronted the police and attempted to assault the officers.
?The police officers tried at all times to get him to calm down, but the man would not listen to reason. At that moment, the man pushed and slapped an officer and a policeman pulled out his electric stun gun and fired a first time although the gun didn?t discharge.
?It hit him in his wallet which meant it didn?t discharge as it hadn?t hit his muscles. The two prongs have to land on someone?s body to send out electricity and because the wallet got in the way the stun gun didn?t discharge.
?A second projectile was then fired, which did the job, and it was then that the officers jumped on him and proceeded to immobilise him by shackling him, later taking him to Son Espases hospital for assessment and arrest.
?[On Sunday] afternoon he was taken to court and released on bail pending an ongoing investigation.?
Saracens: ?We?ll deal with this?
Vunipola, 31, was born in Australia to Tongan parents, moved to Wales when he was a child and won a scholarship to Harrow School. He started his professional career with Wasps before moving to Saracens.
The last of his 75 caps for England was in the Rugby World Cup semi-final defeat bv South Africa last year, but he was not selected for Steve Borthwick?s squad for this year?s Six Nations.
Vunipola is widely expected to leave Saracens for Montpellier next season. That move will effectively end any hopes of an international recall, because England players based overseas are ineligible for the national team.
Saracens said in a statement: ?Saracens is aware of an incident involving Billy Vunipola in Majorca. We will of course deal with this incident internally, and will not make any further comment until then.?
Billy Vunipola?s battles with alcohol and the ?what if? hanging over his career
By Ben Coles
Billy Vunipola has admirably never held back from openly discussing his personal battles, publicly addressing his relationships with alcohol and mental health throughout a career which saw him make his international debut for England at 20 years old and become one of the best No 8s in the world, while also battling a torrid run of injuries.
This latest incident in Majorca, however, is by far the most serious, both in terms of the ramifications ? being arrested in a foreign country for the first time ? but also the wider context of this current stage of his career at the age of 31, about to depart the club which has become his home for more than a decade in Saracens with his England career also seemingly behind him.
Vunipola went through a 15-month gap between Test matches after being dropped by Eddie Jones following the 2021 Six Nations, before returning for the 2022 tour to Australia off the back of his form for Saracens. During that spell, he spoke with a therapist for seven months.
?It took me so long to get to that stage because I felt like I was indestructible until I got all my injuries,? he told World Rugby last year, having undergone knee surgeries and three fractured forearms.
?I felt like God broke me down because I was too arrogant, too confident in my own powers and I didn?t rely on God enough, which I didn?t. I needed someone to challenge me and take me away from that feeling you carry.
?Some people after big injuries aren?t the same player. Now I feel like I?m back to just doing it and the next stage is the instincts, believing in myself. It?s a tough balance between being confident and arrogant and I was probably too far on the arrogant side.?
Vunipola also noted the importance of Calum Clark at his club, the former Saracens player who works as a performance psychologist.
In a podcast episode with former Saracens team-mate Jim Hamilton last year, Vunipola revealed that he first started drinking at the age of 25 following his first knee operation.
He said: ?I went from not drinking my whole life to getting my first serious injury... and thinking I?m gonna start drinking. Just before that I broke up with my now wife and I don?t know, I was just going through a weird phase of just wanting to be that 20-year-old who never got to be a 20-year-old. It sounds silly, but I never did that.
?Fresh out of school I was playing for Wasps, on the brink of getting relegated. Even at 17, I played my first game in the Prem, so I never got to just be a kid. It sounds ungrateful but I did it at 25 in the middle of my career. It?s no coincidence that all my injuries happened when I went on a bender essentially for 10 months before I went crawling back to my wife.?
He apologised to his England team-mates during the 2019 Six Nations after returning late to the team?s hotel in Chiswick and breaking team protocol, following an alcohol-fuelled night out with former England centre Ben Te?o.
That incident came shortly after Vunipola had told The Times in November 2018 that he had stopped drinking, following a serious conversation during the summer from his family, including his brother, Mako, the Saracens and England prop.
?I had a lecture off my mum and dad, and my brother, and I finally listened to them. I?ve stopped drinking,? he said at the time.
In 2017 after England won the Six Nations, a dishevelled Vunipola was pictured being helped out of a Dublin hotel at 4.30am by a member of England?s security team, an image which was met with an almost positive reaction at the time with England?s players letting off some steam after a second straight Six Nations title.
?I don?t have any memory of that,? Vunipola said in 2019, reflecting on that moment. ?All I know is that I am not getting in that state ever again.
?I have learnt from that, it?s a learning curve. I didn?t realise until the day after. It wasn?t a great time for myself, but hopefully I won?t do that to my family again. You?ve got to have some control of yourself and I probably didn?t.
?I guess I did [say I was teetotal] but you have to own the situation. It?s funny to talk about now, but at the time it wasn?t that funny.?
Now, seven years later, an incident at a similar time in the morning raises serious questions about what happens next for Vunipola. Most importantly in terms of his personal well-being and even though the legal ramifications have been quickly resolved with an express trial and small fine. His career is at a crucial crossroads; no longer an automatic starter at Saracens with the progress of Ben Earl and arrival of Tom Willis, on the cusp of leaving the club who have helped to nurture him into a world-class player for a new team in a new country and with the door to playing for England again seemingly shut.
Despite having heard from Vunipola and the bar?s owner that there was no violence and accounting for Vunipola?s swift apology, this is still a concerning incident.