Shutdown gives rugby union an unmissable opportunity to reset

Covid-19 crisis offers rugby union a chance to reset and address issues ranging from the overcrowded calendar to club budgets

Worcester take on Northampton before the Premiership shut down. The top-flight Warriors’ wage bill is bigger than their turnover. Photograph: Robbie Stephenson/JMP/REX/Shutterstock

Realism in rugby has gone viral in the last month. English club owners from Bristol’s Steve Lansdown to London Irish’s Mick Crossan and unions from England to Australia all agree that the suspension of the game throughout the world as countries look to slow the spread of the coronavirus has presented an opportunity to reset the professional game.

“Club rugby has to change,” said Crossan. “Last season cost me £4m and I can’t afford that. It’s definitely not a sustainable business. We cannot keep relying on rich benefactors. This crisis may actually help club rugby if everyone cuts their cloth to suit their pockets and it brings back common sense.”

The current lockdown has exposed the sport’s parlous financial position, union and club, with increases in turnover tending to be spent on wages so that they are no better off. Worcester’s last financial accounts showed a turnover of £12.1m was eclipsed by a wage bill of £12.8m. No wonder the club was sold for £1.

“We do not want to come back in and carry on with the same model that repeats the errors of the past,” said the RFU chief executive, Bill Sweeney. “When you have a crisis of this scale, and I do not think anyone predicted this magnitude, it highlights where there are fault-lines. Some are being exposed now.”

The game in Europe went into the professional era 25 years ago sleepwalking but the south was more alert. Wealthy entrepreneurs in England and France saw an opportunity and took over clubs, quickly finding themselves on a collision course with their unions when there was not even a distant prospect of turning a profit. All that has changed since are running costs thanks to an explosion in wages.

“We are all acutely aware that from present adversity new opportunity could, and very much should, be born,” said the Welsh Rugby Union chairman, Gareth Davies. “Streamlining our playing calendar and balancing up the need for revenue generation have long been issues facing our sport. We need each other more than ever to resolve this conundrum and all rugby playing nations should now realise the extent to which we are interdependent. The end result should be a truly global international calendar. Unity is not only the key to survival but long-term prosperity.”

Premiership Rugby this week repeated its desire to complete the season and fulfil commercial contracts, but it will be a long time before normal life resumes. Even if the restrictions on large gatherings were relaxed sooner rather than later, would there be a demand for big-capacity sporting events amid fears of a renewed outbreak of Covid-19? Social distancing will take on a voluntary nature and there appears to be more chance of next season being affected than a resumption any time soon.

Bernard Laporte has floated the idea of a global club rugby championship. Photograph: Pascal Rossignol/Reuters

The financial squeeze will become greater and when rugby is played again Test matches will have priority because they are the sport’s commercial driver. The south faces losing its incoming tours: if that happened, Europe’s autumn schedule would need to be revamped and revenue shared, a subject the north has consistently refused to address.

As Davies said, all the unions are in it together and they have an opportunity to assert their authority together, as they should have done in 1995. This week the French Rugby Federation president, Bernard Laporte, floated the idea of a world club championship, a more exclusive version of the Heineken Champions Cup.

It was not something he had suddenly dreamed up. Laporte is running on a ticket with the World Rugby chairman, Bill Beaumont, who is up for re-election next month. Laporte is bidding to become his deputy and the governing body’s plan for a nations league, which was scuppered by some of the Six Nations last year, still has legs.

The planned divisions below the Rugby Championship and the Six Nations are being organised, providing a pathway for second- and third-tier nations. The European unions are in talks with the private equity company CVC about taking a 15% stake in their business in return for £300m.

There will be a temptation, with all the unions predicting substantial losses this year, to snatch the £50m+ each would receive, but how far would it go after debts had been absorbed? The Premiership clubs last year received £12.5m each after selling a 27% stake to CVC, which means they will each receive around £1.5m less from central funds each year at a time when enhanced television and sponsorship deals will be tough to negotiate.

The nations league promised a substantial increase in turnover for unions with all the money raised going to the game and none to speculators whose concern was the bottom line. Put together with Laporte’s proposal, it would allow all the tier one unions to contract their leading players, relieving some of the financial burden on clubs in France and England.

The clubs would resist the move. Owners have put a significant amount into the domestic game with a consequent rise in playing standards and facilities, but wage inflation means the business as a whole is losing some £50m a year, a figure that will rise. The £7m salary cap will be reviewed after the start of the season, but it will need to come down rather than go up.

The playing calendar in Europe is a compromised mish-mash, a product of the drive for cash, which serves neither club nor country well. It cannot survive the current crisis and unions will never have a better opportunity to force change. The game needs them to seize the moment.

Lions concerns show issues with calendar

South Africa are the most fortunate of the major unions in the south; they have the Lions visiting next year, a tour that will provide a financial windfall.

The Lions will again be coached by Warren Gatland who this week suggested that the tour should be preceded by a one-off Test against New Zealand that would amount to a decider after the 1-1 series draw in 2017.

Kieran Read and Sam Warburton lift the shared trophy in 2017. Photograph: Huw Evans/REX/Shutterstock

The Lions are only playing eight matches in South Africa, although the Gallagher Premiership final will be played on the weekend of their departure. Gatland’s reasoning is that it would generate between £4m and £5m, income the game will need after the financial damage caused by the suspension of sport because of the coronavirus.

World Rugby is currently looking at ways of reorganising the calendar, working on the premise that the July tours to the south are unlikely to go ahead in their entirety, if any will at all.

Gatland’s idea is worth looking at, although it would mean he would not be able to pick players who were in the Premiership play-offs. The failure of the home unions and the English clubs to agree a schedule in a Lions year that would allow the tourists proper time to prepare is an example of how the current calendar does not work.

The Lions are crucial commercially to the unions in the north and south, feeding the game as a whole. As long as players are caught in the middle of club and country, there will never be a clear pecking order. More muddle is too costly an option.

Still want more?

Andy Martin on the unforgettable day in 1999 when Wales took over Wembley and denied England a grand slam.

More on the Premiership’s plan for an extended break amid the coronavirus crisis, and Warren Gatland’s idea for a Lions v All Blacks “decider” next year.

Quiz time! Test your knowledge of the Six Nations here.

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