Domestic game?s rulers have woken up at last ? renewal is in the air
Stephen Jones
This is a ludicrous time to start hailing a revival ? but I am going to do so anyway. It will seem to many that professional rugby in England is close to rock bottom, with collapsed clubs and poor international results. Last week the trickle of elite players leaving to play their club rugby outside England ? and therefore withdrawing from contention to play for their country ? was in danger of becoming a flood.
Luke Cowan-Dickie, Joe Marchant, David Ribbans, Sam Simmonds and Jack Nowell have all committed to French teams. Anthony Watson is examining Castres, Courtney Lawes has spoken about a foreign contract, and Jack Willis has decided to re-sign with Toulouse. Frighteningly, it seemed last week that Maro Itoje was leaving too, although friends told us that he was merely expressing his own frustration at the sight of decamping friends.
But with the club salary cap in the Gallagher Premiership reduced from ?6.4 million to ?5 million, English rugby?s contract market is weak and cash-strapped ? and the horrible effects of Covid are still afflicting it.
Understandably, Steve Borthwick, the England head coach, is desperate for his men to stay. He has called for the RFU to lift the ban on players who go abroad.
But the RFU and Premiership Rugby (PR) appear to be immoveable. As the RFU said on Friday: ?It is important to all rugby stakeholders to have the best English talent playing in England.? But not for England? The downfall of Wasps and of Worcester Warriors, ejected from the Gallagher Premiership, meanwhile, has been agonising.
So with that little lot to depress our souls you may be surprised by a view that the upturn is beginning. But it is. After today?s La Rochelle vs Saracens Heineken Champions Cup quarter-final, the whole of the Premiership will be basking in an unashamed luxury. And a rare one ? every fit player will be available.
Looking at the remaining matches in a league that can still thrill you to bits, the chances are that, after a compelling battle, the top four will be Saracens, Sale Sharks, Leicester Tigers and London Irish ? that observation alone is, no doubt, enough for the chasing teams to gatecrash. But at the moment the semi-finals will be Saracens vs Irish and Sale vs Leicester, and any combination could still serve up one of the grandest of grand finals staged.
And just look who has woken up. For years, PR has made Rip Van Winkle look like an insomniac. But all of a sudden, it has kicked out the old and driven in the new. From now on, the valiant group of club owners who tended to grumpily refuse anything not directly and immediately beneficial to themselves have voted away some of their own powers, and good for them.
The PR and the tournament itself will now be run by a Sporting Commission, the kind of multi-talented body with independent members for which rugby has been crying out at all levels for decades. The body will be in charge of minimum standards, standard player contracts, player loading (the total stressors and demands on players in training and matches), season structure, salary-cap negotiations and Premiership regulations.
It includes: Simon Massie-Taylor, the newest chief executive, who has impressed; Phil Winstanley, the old warrior prop; then there are three independent members who are now being sought, plus one distinguished former player. So PR will no longer be sitting in judgment on itself as judge and jury and prison warder. The independents will help it clean out of sight.
Furthermore, the idea that the top players will be on central contracts has also been dismissed from within PR this week. Good. Given the RFU?s track record in running professional rugby, the idea that it would be out there employing the latest talent and sifting it would be hilariously funny if it were not so horrible.
But there will also be far stricter supervision, and independent supervision, of the financial standings of all the clubs.
There is progress too on the vexed question of promotion and relegation, which has been in abeyance. From the end of next season, the bottom team in the Premiership will have to play the top team in the Championship to stay up.
There was a time when the club pushing for promotion would have to reveal, from out of thin air, a stadium that could hold 12,000 people. The promoted club will now only have to accommodate 5,000 spectators at first, and 10,001 thereafter. Much more fair.
How many teams will there be in the Premiership? At the moment PR says this is up for grabs. There are 11 this season, but there is a move inside PR to reduce that to ten, with this increasing the slice of pie that each club will take away. But the Premiership needs more teams to stamp their personality right across the English season, autumn, winter and spring. If there are only ten, it will be impossible to keep the whole competition in the public eye.
Finally, the revival can be declared official if the English clubs (and others across Europe) flex their muscles and refuse to staff such a preposterous number of Test matches.
Here is a great example of present thinking. There is a comprehensive survey on player loads ? it concerns how players can be protected in mind and body. But every single one of the measures investigated concerns about training, and how loading can be decreased by tinkering with training sessions.
It is a disguise behind which union concern melts away into rapacity. It cannot admit that player welfare is harmed by Tests and you will be safe as houses if you call off the match. International games have been ferociously devalued, while remaining dangerous to life and limb. Clubs, reclaim your employees.
There is no sense of revival among elite English players as there is still panic about the next contract. But gradually, and at a price, the ruling bodies have kicked their own backsides into gear.
What of Wasps? They have reformed under the businessman Chris Holland, along with former club greats Peter Scrivener and Kenny Logan, to a point where Holland is ?increasingly confident? that Wasps will be on the start line, probably at their new Sixways home, to begin a campaign in the Championship next season.
Amazingly, the First5 Media group has followed them through their tearful demise, and the first shoots of their recovery, for a documentary. What a show that could be. For Wasps and English rugby, renewal is in the air.
Always a Wasp