Author: islander
Subject: Times article
Posted: 06 Sep 2016 at 19:53
This was originally posted in the Nat 1 forum by Aunty M. It's by Owen Slot of The Times. A good read, even before a mention for Jersey and one of our former players at the end...
It’s realists against the dreamers in rugby’s ‘wild west’
"Some people call it “living the dream” and I say “good luck” to them. Playing sport professionally was probably, once, the dream of many who come to read these pages, but you would never have imagined it the way it is in the Greene King IPA Championship.
In what is effectively English rugby union’s second division, you might play before a crowd of a thousand, but often it will be less. You might earn £10,000, but many will earn less. If you get injured, you might find yourself out of a job and your income closed down altogether. It is tough; it requires all of the hard work and commitment of the Aviva Premiership, but brings none of the glamour. Perhaps most concerning of all is that some clubs cannot even provide what most would describe as adequate medical cover.
The RFU clearly don’t know what to do with the Championship, or what it is for
You take your chance in the Championship. You take your risks. You are, by definition, a rugby romantic. Your calling is obsessive, glorious and foolhardy. And you know that the sums don’t add up. Yesterday, London Welsh were called to the High Court, facing a winding-up order. Players had not been paid, coaches had been laid off. This, one of the most historic clubs in England, established in 1885, provider of numerous British Lions, was facing administration and the threat of liquidation.
Then, as had been expected, a last-minute reprieve was granted with the confirming of a last-minute investor. “A major California-based investment group”, according to the club’s website, had acquired London Welsh. To which the only logical reaction is: why?
This was not the first time the club had faced possible administration. Seven years ago, they actually failed to duck in time, but as ever, a willing and ample pocket was found to breathe life into the cadaver.
Some clubs, however, get their sums wrong and go into freefall. Manchester were in the Championship in 2009 but are now in the equivalent of level seven. Orrell were in the second tier in 2005 and are now at level eight.
If you watch a sequence of pre-season interviews with the captains of the Championship teams, available on the RFU website, there is a telling comment from Will Warden, of Richmond, the team promoted last season to the Championship from National League One.
“Are you concerned about the potential mismatches that Richmond will inevitably face this season?” he was asked. He answered thus: “I’m not scared of going out there and losing games. I’m scared of going out there and losing the club that we’ve got.”
Indeed Richmond are a club of which I am a fan, though not solely — a declaration is required here — because the Slot family are members. The point Warden was making was that Richmond will not be lost due to their success in scaling the heights to the Championship.
Warden was the only one of the captains to turn up to the Championship pre-season media day in a suit — and that was because he was the only one coming from work. Richmond are paying their players only a match fee; they are a team made up of part-time players with jobs. They made the mistake of shooting for the stars once before and went bust, and they have vowed that won’t be happening again.
The result is that, on Saturday, Richmond (wage bill negligible) will play London Irish (wage bill about £3 million). A measure of the mismatch will see Richmond’s Tim Walford, a financial analyst who played his way up through the B and C team, propping down against Ben Franks, the All Black World Cup-winner. That cannot be right.
This, though, is the Championship: a place where dreamers meet realists, where professional meets amateur, where heavyweights meet those punching above their weight and where no one makes a profit. Some have called it the “wild west” of rugby; without the clubs’ benefactors, Richmond would actually be the last gun standing.
The RFU clearly don’t know what to do with the Championship, or what it is for. It pays each club £530,000 a year; the Championship clubs feel that they should get more. Yet why bankroll further a product to which TV and footfall have remained so resolutely immune?
Here, though, are four reasons.
One: it may be the players’ choice to keep living the dream in the Championship, yet it is negligent to allow them to do so when medical support is clearly inadequate. For starters, the RFU should cover private medical insurance for the entire Championship; this is not a posh perk, it is a necessity to be able to work. Some players tell you that there are not even sufficient pitchside doctors for head injury assessment; that is a scandal. The RFU should pay for two doctors per game minimum. And also fund extra physio support; allow these diehards to be the best they can be.
Two: In the Premiership, players are put on a standard contract. No such thing in the Championship, where contract loopholes are legion, as are the horror stories about injured players being made redundant. A minimum requirement for RFU funding, for those wishing to pay full-time players, is a minimum wage and a standard, protected contract.
Three: The Rugby Players’ Association (RPA) does great work providing career advice and work opportunities for Premiership players. However, it provides no such service for Championship clubs — because it cannot afford to. It should be the right of a professional player that he can access the services of his union; the RFU should guarantee funding to expand the RPA and ensure all players are similarly served.
Four: To warrant funding, clubs should have a development obligation and, for every match-day squad, field a certain number of players under the age of 25.
However, do not fund more players. Do not splash money on the wild west, just tame it.
Last Friday night, in Newcastle, the Falcons named on their bench a new prop called Sam Lockwood. He had never been in an academy, had been picked up by Leeds Carnegie after university, but it didn’t work for him there. He then got picked up by Jersey, made 50 appearances in two-and-a-half years in the Championship, and became, according to Dean Richards, the Newcastle director of rugby, the best loose-head in the league. Thus, at the age of 27, Richards made him a Premiership player.
If you keep the Championship, rough and ready as it may be, some will go bust, some will punch way too high, but you keep a dream alive ".