CAN we afford a PGP? The short answer, unfortunately, has to be a “yes” since, with the Premiership clubs controlling the contracts of all top players in England, some form of agreement between these institutions and the RFU for the release of international players has to be in place.
I say unfortunately, because it seems to me highly questionable as to whether rugby union’s support base here can sustain the costs of any conceivable variation of the terms of the existing PGA. Numbers can be switched from existing subventions paid to the professional clubs, by establishing an element of central contracting for international players but, saving the unlikely contingency that massive new TV deals or sponsorship arrangements might be found, the aggregate amount available to the Governing Body seems to offer little room for flexibility.
The central Community Rugby budget has been cut to the bone, so there is no more blood to be squeezed out of that stone. Despite every single Premiership club having recently declared sizeable operating losses, there seems little sign of any willingness of these organisations to play their part by cutting their coats according to the cloth available – let alone any readiness to share with a more dynamic, fully profesional second tier even a small portion of their central funding. PRL owners might well regard any such arrangement as being a subsidy by them of potentially competing clubs, but I would argue that they have been given more generous central support than the game can afford for several years and a reapportionment would merely be a small clawback of these overpayments.
The harsh reality is that, unless substantial new sources of external long term funding for the game can be found, overall PRL costs have to be cut, if professional club rugby is to be sustainable. The clubs will understandably point to their existing disadvantage in terms of playing budgets as compared with their French counterparts, but the fundamental advantages that the latter enjoy – municipally-funded stadia and average gates across the whole Top 14 of almost 15,000 per game, on the back of which a huge TV deal covering both first and second tiers has been negotiated – are most unlikely to become available here.
Our game simply doesn’t enjoy the same levels of popular support as in France. Just as clubs in lower RFU leagues have had, increasingly, to accept that financial sustainability may need to be achieved by taking at least a short term hit in performance and, sometimes, league levels, those running our game at the highest levels need to be asking themselves whether the terms of the PGP will be affordable for the full duration of the agreement. Hopefully, they are doing so as part of their long, drawn-out negotiations.
Either way, once the necessarily confidential discussions between RFU and PRL are concluded, those of us battling to sustain and grow the grassroots game will be entitled to a full and detailed explanation as to how the new agreement will be to the benefit of the whole game.
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