It won’t be long before Christmas arrives and the three wise men of the Rugby Football Union are promising gifts. Up to 25 shiny new ‘enhanced’ contracts that Steve Borthwick can offer to a core group of England players over whom the head coach can exercise greater control from next season. A revamped Championship with up to 14 teams – to allow for the rapid return of Wasps, London Irish and Worcester, whose commercial brands are seen as too valuable to let go – and a player pathway system that will end the stagnation of young talent .
Not before time, Bill Sweeney as CEO, Conor O’Shea as performance director and Steve Diamond – recruited in an advisory role – outline their vision of English rugby. A “whole game” solution to a system that is broken, a system that has seen four clubs go bankrupt in the last 15 months and a system that has seen England reach the World Cup semi-finals despite, not because of, them. Apparently a “generation” England team is coming together and the aim is to be “world leading” in all areas of professional rugby. Optimism everywhere.
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Sweeney calls the shots, O’Shea is the brains of the operation, and Diamond is the powerhouse tasked with dealing with the union’s endless bureaucracies. As he says, “All that has been presented to me is subcommittee, subcommittee, subcommittee.” But the three are united in their message that the Professional Playing Partnership (PGP) between the RFU and Premiership Rugby (PRL), which has yet to be finalized but will launch next summer, could bring about transformative change.
The improved contracts are the most striking part of the PGP. Almost thirty years after missing the boat at the dawn of professionalism, they are a step towards central contracts, even if they are still far from the whole. Sweeney describes the previous eight-year deal as being about “access” and that England would get more of it for its players. He says the PGP is more about “control” and if that sounds Orwellian, the point is that Borthwick has a greater say in things like the conditioning of its players and the medical programs. After this year’s Six Nations he complained that his players were not fit enough and that he lost all control when they returned to their clubs. These contracts are intended to address that.
From the players’ perspective, it’s about safety. At £160,000 per man – regardless of squad status – players could receive significantly more on the previous pro-rata basis of around £23,000 per match, but these contracts guarantee income regardless of injury. They also avoid a scenario where a player hides a minor injury or is afraid to speak out for fear of losing appearance compensation. Henry Arundell turning down the offer was a blow, but Maro Itoje and Jamie George are convinced to accept and the acceptance thereafter is likely to be positive. That said, the current level of uncertainty for some players and clubs where the PGP has not yet been signed is not helpful.
Injuries are inevitable, so Borthwick will eventually have to use players outside the core 25, but even allowing for a handful of players per matchday, it’s worth noting that the RFU are expected to make significant savings compared to previous system of compensation for performances. You would expect the clubs to want to be financially compensated for relinquishing a degree of control over their players, but the RFU says that is still a work in progress.
However, there are limits to the amount of control Borthwick will have. O’Shea points to conditioning, hints at the input for how many and in which club matches players are allowed to appear, and talks about centralized performance data and standardized fitness testing. But Borthwick, for example, will not be able to force Harlequins to play Marcus Smith at full-back. The limits are already becoming clear when Sale’s promising prop Asher Opoku-Fordjour is taken as a case study. The RFU view the 19-year-old as a loosehead, Sale believes he is a coward and it is not obvious how that particular circle should be squared.
In any case, as part of the RFU’s vision, he will not spend his weekends in the stands. There is a determination to tackle the long-standing problem of promising young players struggling for game time. Hence the plan to limit the number of Premier League squads to around 35 players – although this has already met resistance from some clubs that rely heavily on collaboration with universities, for example – and supplemented with twelve transition players. Regular England A matches will also help. “Talent ID isn’t about spotting talent, it’s about giving talent opportunities, and this is where English rugby has failed miserably,” says O’Shea.
Player development also plays a role in the RFU’s determination to reshape the Championship, even if the desire to restore Wasps, Worcester and London Irish appears to be a more important driving factor. The Championship clubs broadly agree but have strong reservations about whether the RFU and PRL are truly committed to promotion and relegation and want the league to become a ‘meritocracy’, which is short for not wanting to allow three clubs that have gone bankrupt to go bankrupt. quickly back to the second level.
They also want to know how much funding they would receive – something the RFU has so far been unable to answer, and the clubs are less than enthusiastic about what they see as the union’s ‘take it or leave it’ attitude. “If there are two clubs interested and everyone else says no, then you go back to the status quo and lose the opportunity,” Sweeney said. “But we are not going to invest in something that is not investable.”
The tender process for entry into the revamped second tier will begin in February and while the RFU is confident there will be enough interest to proceed, significant hurdles still remain.
Thus it becomes clear that for all that the RFU is enthusiastic about its vision, there are clear limitations and that it is the relationships and goodwill between stakeholders, rather than mandates or legislation, that will bring about change. As far as England and the Premier League are concerned, the first signs are good. Borthwick came from a low base, but anecdotally he has already repaired bridges that he discovered had been burned when he was appointed.
“Steve has been wise since he got this job,” Diamond says. “Eddie Jones came to Sale once, however long he was there, and his only question was he asked me to play against Ben Curry at scrum half!”
However, in terms of the RFU’s relationship with the Championship clubs, there is clearly still some way to go.