On August 26 this year rugby union will mark its 30th year of professionalism. Many of the predictions that were made as to the consequences of that decision were mere guesswork in 1995. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now look at how this has worked out for the game and, if we are sensible, learn from history to avoid making the same mistakes over the next three decades.
The travails of professional rugby at the international and club level have been well documented and will continue to attract more scrutiny, but what is happening at the game’s grass roots, which provides the future stars and enjoyment for the vast majority of players? The answer is a mixed bag.
It is difficult to get authoritative participation figures for 1995, but it is indisputable that participation numbers have fallen for men and boys, with the decline only being partly ameliorated by the increased number of women and girls coming into rugby. Most clubs run fewer teams than before, and the number of clubs has declined.
Who is to blame for this? Well, the Rugby Football Union made the first and most serious blunder by failing to properly plan for professionalism in the first place. The consequences of this failure are still being felt today. At club level, a nationally organised league structure has given the amateur game shape, but it has not been universally beneficial. A handful of genuinely ambitious clubs have climbed the league, but the majority have found that progression has brought its own problems like excessive travel, ancillary expenses and losing touch with local clubs.
This is a topic aired many times, but it continues to be a major problem at the lower levels of English rugby. In 2017, an ad-hoc RFU committee introduced new rules about paying grass-roots players. It did not, as I and some other committee members suggested, divide the game into strict professional, semi-professional and amateur sections. It chose to set maximum annual spending limits for clubs at certain levels and to withhold RFU grants from teams in other ranks which chose to pay players – no level was subject to an outright ban on paying players.
Has this worked? No, it has not. The same complaints are still ringing loudly at lower levels as they were in the two decades before the RFU made the revised payment regulations. If those changes had worked, I would not still be hearing these objections.
The higher echelons of the RFU do not want to revisit this subject but dismissing it is a mistake. Each time a club finds a sugar-daddy investor to pay players it causes resentment because rivals have to struggle to just stay still. It is the same when that club poaches players that have been developed elsewhere.
The RFU will say that this is not still a raised complaint. It might not be but that is because clubs have gradually lost hope that they will properly deal with it and see no point in complaining. ...
