Clubs must call SGM to hold RFU to account | Nick Cain

THE news that RFU chief executive Bill Sweeney has had to go bowl in hand like some latterday Oliver to ask the bank for more might be comical if it had not revealed that the cash-strapped RFU has gone from a Triple A rated borrower, to one closer to Minus B.

This emphasises like nothing else the significance of the Baron Files, with their forensic analysis of how the RFU has got itself into such dire straits, with debts of £250m.

It is why, although this week sees our three-part series come to a conclusion in one sense, in another I hope it helps to start a movement which demands root-and-branch changes at the RFU.

The series of interviews with Francis Baron has seen the former RFU chief executive lay bare the almost complete failure of the current Twickenham administration to operate in the best interests of its 1,400 member clubs. This is evident not only in the financial mismanagement which he uncovers from figures that the RFU has published, but also in the dismantling of democratic accountability.

Instead, the RFU seems fixated on concentrating its resources on the 13- club Premiership cartel, while the broad swathe of the game in England atrophies.

Baron implemented PLC standards at the RFU which transformed it financially and administratively into the strongest Union in the world during his tenure from 1998 to 2010.

He says that his main purpose in reminding the RFU of those standards is to get it to recognise that it has taken a series of wrong turns, and now, in his words, has to “reset”.

Now in his early 70s, and enjoying retirement, Baron says he is motivated by a deep regard and affection for the RFU, and has no interest in making any sort of administrative comeback.

More’s the pity, because his grasp of the issues, and the clarity of his analysis, and of the recommen- dations required to get the RFU back on its feet, is light years ahead of what we have seen so far from anyone in the current administration.

One of the most serious issues Baron has raised is the way in which a group of independent non-executive directors have been allowed to take control of the RFU Board. It appears that many of them have only a tenuous interest in Rugby Union – although the Board chair- man Andy Cosslett did play for Broughton Park Colts, Davenport RFC, Edinburgh Wanderers and the University (now Weybridge) Vandals.

However, Cosslett’s chairmanship needs careful scrutiny, because many of the serious financial problems that the RFU currently faces have happened since he was appointed in 2016 – by which time he had already been ensconced on the RFU Board since 2012, after being appointed chairman of England Rugby 2015.

One of the big questions Cosslett’s chairmanship raises is whether he should have been allowed to continue in his £80,000 p.a. RFU post after he  was also appointed as the chairman of Kingfisher PLC – Europe’s largest home improvement company with brands like B&Q and Screwfix – in 2017.

Cosslett’s annual salary from this role was published recently as £496,100, the company’s highest-paid executive. This suggests, at the very least, that Cosslett has a huge amount of responsibility, and a commensurate work-load, in order to meet his Kingfisher obligations.

This might leave the neutered RFU Council, and the Union’s now completely unrepresented member clubs, wondering – as I do – how much time Cosslett has been able to devote to his role at Twickenham?

They might believe, like me, that the demands of running a sporting corporative like the RFU is a role which requires a serious chunk of anyone’s working week.

Whether this sheds any light on the contradictory position Cosslett appears to have taken on the use of financial reserves is something the RFU’s member clubs should also consider.

Cosslett endorsed a policy at Kingfisher of the company holding £3.2 billion in reserves, while at the RFU the board approved the spending of the entire reserve of £67m, and then approved more borrowing to leave the reserve balance sheet £24m in debt – all of it pre-Covid.

Whether this adds up to mismanagement is for England’s rank-and-file member clubs to decide.

Apathy has always been one of the greatest enemies of democracy, but if these are not grounds for clubs in England – the shareholders of Twickenham – to respond by calling an SGM to hold the RFU board to account, then they can have no complaints if the new breed of ‘executive aristocrats’ take liberties with what is rightfully theirs.

NICK CAIN

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