Support for change at RFU keeps on building

By Nick Cain – Read his expert opinion every week

As the SGM vote calling for regime change at the RFU approaches, it is critical that the 1,400 community clubs who are the vast majority of its members remember the tried-and-tested maxim: The people who got us into this mess are not the ones to get us out of it.

This becomes clearer by the hour as the contortions of the incumbent Twickenham regime led by the two Bills, Beaumont and Sweeney, which has a vested interest in keeping the latter as RFU chief executive, is resorting to desperate tactics.

After their limping Roadshow, their latest ruse to persuade the membership not to vote for the SGM/Whole Game Union motion of no confidence in Sweeney, is to bypass regulations.

This has been highlighted by an attempt to introduce an additional counter-resolution at the SGM meeting on March 27 aimed at buying off the clubs by belatedly devolving more powers to them.

It was revealed in an open letter by Beaumont to the member clubs on Friday evening as a variation on one of the oldest tricks in the political book, which is to adopt the policies of your opponents, water them down to suit your ends, and then present them as your own.

Not had the desired impact

However, judging by the vehemently critical responses on community club social media platforms, Beaumont’s bid to save Sweeney by digging out a “Governance and Representation Review” has not had the desired impact.

It has also run into a procedural roadblock, which Beaumont, who stated that Sweeney has the “unanimous support” of the RFU Board, which has approved the additional resolution, appears to have missed.

There is no facility in the rules for the Board to add a resolution to the SGM – and this failure to verify regulations only fosters worries about the Board’s administrative shortcomings.

It is my understanding that the rules have been checked and the information passed on to the RFU administration’s legal director, Angus Bujalski.

What is curious is that a request for added resolutions by the SGM/Whole Game Union had previously been turned down, with Bujalski advising them that they could only do so by getting signatories from 100 clubs to submit another requisition for another SGM.

Red Tape

If that is the case, then Beaumont, Sweeney, and the Board, will presumably have to wade through the same ocean of red-tape.

With the current Twickenham administration having marched the game in England into a crisis mainly of its own making, there is a growing concern in the English game that there are very few checks and balances on the Board’s powers, and that the democratic rights of the RFU’s member clubs are being severely eroded.

Beaumont’s open letter received a robust response from the Whole Game Union, which stated: “It is only because of the Whole Game Union’s ability to corral the dissatisfaction of English rugby with its leadership that Sir Bill and his Board belatedly discovered the need to go out and meet clubs.

None of the proposals in his letter would have been forthcoming if our union was just a few malcontents stirring a pot. The pot was already boiling.”

“Bill Beaumont’s bid to save Bill Sweeney doesn’t seem to have had the desired impact”

There are also signs that there are growing government concerns over the turmoil in the English game, some of it linked to the repayment of DCMS loans to Premiership and Championship clubs during Covid, and some of it to the funding cuts that have left the community game in dire straits.

This is reflected in a debate on the Governance of English Rugby Union to be held at Westminster Hall on March 11.

It has been organised by Perran Moon, the MP for Camborne and Redruth, whose family have strong links to the game in Cornwall – including his brother, Dickon Moon, being the director of rugby at London Cornish RFC.

The momentum for long overdue change in English rugby union, starting with this deeply flawed Twickenham regime, is building.

READ MORE: RFU offers grassroots more say