Nothing better illustrates the gap in resources between Northampton Saints and Leinster, who meet in the Investec Champions Cup semi-final on Saturday evening, than their recent recruitment.
If Leinster shop at Harrods for All Black Jordie Barrett and Springbok RG Snyman, Northampton plunder the equivalent of Home Bargains, announcing three signings on Wednesday from San Diego Legion, Doncaster Knights and Luctonians respectively. Even as leaders of the Gallagher Premiership, Northampton are firmly in the bottom half of the league and will part ways with two of their most prominent players this summer, Courtney Lawes and Lewis Ludlam, having already lost fly-half Dan last season Biggar had lost.
It would be understandable if Northampton chief executive Mark Darbon was jealous of what he will call the ‘spending disparity’ that makes Leinster firm favorites at Croke Park. Instead, he believes European rugby as a whole will benefit from the arrival of this world-class centre. Even if Northampton can’t afford to shop in the more salubrious establishments, Darbon takes as much pride in nurturing a diamond in the rough as back-rower Sam Graham, who was once a chef serving England players food at Pennyhill Park .
“I think having world-class players in Europe is a great thing for our game,” Darbon said Telegraph Sports. “My view is that the biggest challenge facing rugby is the challenge of the crowd. Unless we grow our audience, especially with younger people, we are going to have a real problem with our sport in the future and I think people want to see great players playing great rugby. I think he is a great addition to the European competitions and if we draw Leinster next season our lads would be over the moon to play him.
“We’re not the biggest spenders in the league, but we’ve found a way to make our model work. As exciting as it is to see Jordie Barrett, we’re really excited to see guys like Sam Graham and Tom James, who have plowed their trade in the Championship and made the step up to the Premier League and then Europe in fantastic fashion . That is really motivating for us, given the model we use.”
That model boils down to being the best managed club in the Premier League. With no sugar daddy behind them, Northampton sit at the top of the Premier League with the highest percentage of homegrown players, all committed to a compelling brand of rugby that has also led to the club having the highest representation in the English Six Nations selection. No wonder the signs are in front of the entire house in Franklin’s Gardens.
When Darbon was appointed CEO in 2017, Northampton were in a period of stagnation following their Premier League title three years earlier, with a squad that was old, bloated and well paid. Darbon moved decisively to replace Jim Mallinder as director of rugby with New Zealander Chris Boyd, with orders to prioritize three things: young, English and lots of potential. Phil Dowson has adopted that mantra from Boyd and is on the verge of delivering a fourth play-off qualification, but Darbon is aware that silverware is needed to make his vision a reality.
“I think if you look at us from a rugby perspective, we’ve gone through that period of going from being an older, experienced, internationally managed side that played a certain way, to being the youngest team in the league with comfortably the highest percentage of homegrown players who played a brand. of rugby which people seem to be really excited about,” Darbon said. “The frustration is that we haven’t won anything yet. We have to demonstrate that we can gain something with that model. “But at the same time, we’ve gone from being one of the top spenders in the league to not being at that level anymore.”
Commercially, the club were the last to make a profit in the Premier League before the Covid-19 pandemic struck and they have just achieved record turnover. Darbon, who is likely to be on the Rugby Football Union’s shortlist to replace chief executive Bill Sweeney when he steps down, arrived at the club after working on the London 2012 project and for events company Tougher Mudder, and has managed the helped the club significantly broaden its horizons. . “Someone said to me before I started, ‘The problem with Northampton Saints is they want to be the biggest club in Northampton’,” Darbon said. “And I didn’t really know what they meant. And then I came here and it felt a little isolated. If anything, I think we have become much more open and progressive, both in terms of the way we think about our commercial model and how we interact with other stakeholders.”
Nevertheless, Northampton still recorded a loss of £467,836 in the latest set of financial results, which does not bode well for the rest of the league with the best-managed club in the red. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist, right now the cost base exceeds the revenue that the clubs generate,” Darbon said. “As a result, their clubs are loss-making. I think the average loss in the year we made a small profit was £5m across all Premier League clubs. So if we made a small profit and the average loss was £5 million, there are some healthy losses.”
The Professional Game Partnership is a step in the right direction, but Darbon warned it won’t be “transformational.” He is also disappointed to note that the renewed broadcast deal with TNT Sports “is not as high as we would have liked”. According to Darbon, it all comes down to expanding the wider rugby audience, but at the same time he views with alarm the increase in the Premier League salary cap from £5m to £6.4m next season.
“I’m a big believer in compensating our players appropriately,” Darbon said. “They are the heart and soul of what we do in a full-fledged, competitive sport, and I think they should be well rewarded for that. But as clubs and as a sport we cannot allow the model to come under too much pressure and the cost base to grow without the right controls.
“The salary cap is exactly that: it is a ceiling and not a target. Our ambition is to build the most competitive team we can and win things, but we are under no illusion that we have to do that within our means.”