English Rugby on top of the World?
By markc on 26/5/2003
May 26 2003
England are unofficially number one in the world, and one of the strong favourites to take the RWC in the Autumn. Tickets for England matches at Fortress Twickenham are as rare as hen’s teeth. Rugby in this country has never been so well supported. And yet...
...There are ominous signs that professional rugby is approaching a major hiatus. The transition from ‘rich Sugar Daddy’ owners to viable businesses is not happening at the rate the RFU would like. In fact, if you removed Leicester and Northampton from the equation, you would be hard-pushed to find a club who are not greatly reliant in some way from a wealthy backer. Even the mighty Champions-elect Gloucester have well-documented cash-worries. The departure of players and the pruning of backroom staff is an inevitable conclusion of the disillusionment faced by the money men. And yet this scenario is nothing compared to that staring at the fans and employees of the once mighty Bristol.
Told time and time again that there is to be no more money, that games are to be played here, there, and everywhere, and that merger talks were going on with the old enemy Bath, of all people, in order to save the club, the Bristol faithful got more and more upset with the management. Now that the unthinkable has happened, and that Bristol will be playing in National league 1 next year, it may just have been exactly what was needed. The incoming management must focus on running a tight ship and ensuring that whatever happens on the rugby pitch is not affected by what happens off it. The lack of this kind of planning has probably been the biggest contributor to Bristol's demise this term.
The promoted team, Rotherham will be joining another circus. It is a fact of life that to compete at the top level of any sport, the newly promoted team must recruit players in order to hold their own. It will be very tempting to over-extend themselves in order to attract the players of the callibre that would be required. Realistically, there are only about three or four clubs currently in Nat 1 who could make a go of the ZP (Rotherham, Worcester, Exeter, and maybe Orrell) with perhaps the ‘Cornish Upstarts’ from Penzance/Newlyn adding to the mix. Never has the gulf from National to Zurich been so wide, and one which shows no outward signs of narrowing.
Foreign Players
And that’s not all, the old chestnut of restriction of non-european players is rearing it’s ugly head again. It’s a double-edged sword, this one. One only has to look at the Newcastle ‘experiment’ this year to see how perilous this is if it doesn’t work out. It can be said that the arrival of Mark Andrews proved almost as valuable to the Falcons as the genius that is Jonny Wilkinson.
The RFU is trying to play it’s part by bringing in salary capping, seemingly an admirable concept on paper. The size of the cap, however, £1.9million, is not just aimed at the players. Coaches and management must also take their cut from this pot. And of course, like almost everything these days, professional rugby players are a global commodity - it will not be long before those unrestricted Gaul managers will be swarming over the channel clutching lucrative contracts to wave at unwary players in exchange for migration to their smart new municipally owned grounds.
Stadia
On the subject of stadia, how many clubs are in the fortunate position of Leeds, and can claim to call their ground their own? Sale have had to engineer a solution by taking over Stockport County Football Club - funded by sugar daddy Brian Kennedy - since their traditional ground at Heywood Road is too small and will never be able to meet the 10K minimun capacity laid down by the RFU.
Bath are arguably in a worse predicament – no planning permission to permanently increase the size of the ground will ever take place there. The same could be said for Gloucester and Quins. Northampton and Newcastle have been far-sighted enough to rebuild their grounds to hold realistic capacities – there’s no fun playing in front of half-empty terracing, as Sale would have found out had they moved to Maine Road. Even the mighty Leicester Tigers know not to think of ground sharing with their Soccer neighbours, as they would be pushed to exceed 20,000 crowds on a regular basis.
Uncomfortable Truth?
So what does this mean? Put plainly, there are simply not the crowds to sustain professional club rugby paying the players what they feel they deserve, as well as maintaining the supporting infrastructure. In any given week, the combined attendance of the ZP struggles around the 65K mark, little more than Manchester United take on their own. Clubs must balance the books, but as England have found, the much-maligned corporate hospitality market can bring in far more revenue than the lowly punter.
Leeds are to be applauded in the way that they can make attendance affordable for all the family. Surely if we were not in the RL heartland we would be pulling in even greater gates. Contrast that with the high price of tickets at other clubs. Things are even tighter for families now that ‘Pruning Prudence’ and his stealth-stealers have slashed at disposable incomes for entertainment.
So where do we go from here? Is the (now defunct) merger between Bath and Bristol the beginning of franchised provincial Rugby? Will the Celtic League and ZP merge with our ‘friends’ on the continent to provide a Euro League? Will the ZP be ring-fenced to clubs that are capable of providing a viable business plan and that are not backed by one concern who can disappear on a whim?
When one reads of the Bristol players who are taking courses in plumbing with an eye to the future, it begs the question “Is professional rugby a viable option?”, and an answer seems to rear its head that is not one that most of us would want to countenance.....