Nigel Wray: Saracens ‘punished’ for producing England stars

Chairman Nigel Wray has described the compensation system for producing England players as “a complete nonsense” after revealing Saracens are set to be denied upwards of £500,000 over the course of the season.
With eight Saracens players named by Eddie Jones in his 33-man squad, Wray claims the Allianz Park side are entitled to compensation of £180,000-per-man under terms of the current agreement between Premiership Rugby and the RFU.
However, controversial Premiership ‘smoothing' arrangements mean a third of that money goes into a central pot to be divided amongst other sides, while Saracens will be hit with a double financial-whammy during the period their Test players are away.
With so many top stars missing, Wray fears his club will be unable to meet demanding weekly English-qualified player targets – currently standing at 15 for each matchday 23 – meaning they could lose another significant chunk of cash.
Wray told The Rugby Paper: “Our problems start now when we lose all our players to England. It's a huge honour to create all those young England players but it also gives us a heavy burden and the compensation system as it stands is all wrong.
“For example, we may not qualify for EQP payments for eight weeks because we won't have enough English players in our match day squads, but that's because they're playing for England so how can that be fair? It's a complete nonsense.
“You're meant to be paid for producing England-qualified players, which we do successfully, but then when they do play for England they don't count towards our match day squads and it puts us under the required figure, therefore we're penalised.
“It's ridiculous and ‘smoothing' doesn't help us either. We have eight players selected for which the compensation should be £180k -per-player, but £60k is smoothed out of that figure which comes to £480k, which is another nonsense.
“It penalises us enormously. It's just not what was intended. What's intended is you work hard to produce England players and get rewarded for it, not penalised. Hopefully people will see the logic and the new deal with the RFU will reflect that.”
Wray, meanwhile, is unconcerned by the club's mounting debt, which now stands at £44.4 million.
Accounts for 2014-15 reveal Saracens increased their turnover from £13.5m to £15.3m and that annual operating losses were reduced by £1.2m to £3.95m.
Wray explained: “The money owed, I owe to myself – we're not in debt to outside parties.
“We've reduced our losses, and will do so again because we're developing a good events business at Allianz Park. We're becoming self-sustaining, there is no risk and we're working hard to develop the ground.”
NEALE HARVEY