You may have noticed that the sports pages are less, well, sporty than they once were. There is rather more chance of reading stern-faced stories about Sir Jim Ratcliffe and the Glazers or Manchester City’s latest legal dispute than, say, the muddy winter joys of grassroots rugby union. It is the way of the modern world and, anyway, England playing Scotland in the Six Nations this Saturday is a bigger deal, right?
Well, yes and no. If you are counting the beans inside the Rugby Football Union’s offices in Twickenham there is barely a contest. The Six Nations annually bankrolls the rest of the domestic game: it is the commercial goose that lays the golden Gilbert‑shaped eggs. Never mind the scoreboard, let’s keep the corporate guests well fed and watered. It’s all about the bottom line.
In more modest clubhouses up and down the country everyone recognises this basic reality. Of course they do. Because, if they are to prosper themselves, they also have to keep the lights on, the pitches in order and the toilets working. In theory, all that money banked at the top of the pyramid filters down for the greater post-Covid good. In return the grassroots clubs keep rugby’s flame alight in places where RFU executives seldom tread.
Talk to the nation’s unpaid armies of volunteers, however, and the Calcutta Cup showpiece this weekend is a long way down their priority list. Recently the Whole Game Union, the organisation supporting around 250 dissident clubs that have forced the RFU to convene a special general meeting next month, sent out a survey asking for feedback. The replies amount to perhaps the loudest collective cry for help ever received from the shires.
The dissatisfaction dripping from the anonymised responses certainly seems intense. “The biggest issue is a fractured game … too many vested interests with no clear idea how to grow it,” a northern referees’ society writes. “Accept community rugby actually exists before it completely dies out,” a lower-tier club from East Anglia pleads. “The RFU is not in touch with the grassroots and is totally ignoring the problems it has. As [the] grassroots don’t bring in money, they write it off … yet it is the biggest membership of the RFU.”
On and on it goes: “poor leadership”, “disastrous RFU/Premiership dealings” and a “very poor player pathway system” are merely a fraction of the widespread grievances expressed, alongside cuts in travel cost assistance, Championship funding and shortcomings in communication. The fresh eight-year partnership with the Premiership clubs, costing around £264m, also remains a clear source of frustration. As another respondent put it: “The Premiership is being run as a cartel supported by the RFU. There is a complete disconnect between the top and the community game.”
Many are clearly anxious, not just for their own small parishes but for the wider club rugby family. Not so long ago, for example, Rochford Hundred in Essex ran eight adult men’s sides. Now they are down to three and their president, Ray Stephenson, has grown weary of what he perceives to be a lack of support from above.
“A lot of clubs in Essex now only run one men’s senior side. If there’s unavailability or injuries they’re crying off games. Clubs are going to disappear … we’ve already lost four in recent times. I would say community rugby is in a tricky position. The support mechanisms just aren’t there. The consistent complaint I hear is that Bill Sweeney and the RFU are more interested in corporates and wanting their money. It’s hard to find any strong evidence of where they’re supporting the community game to make it secure going forward.”
Stephenson also reckons some RFU officials are “living in cloud cuckoo land” when they seek to offset the falling numbers in adult male participation with healthier figures relating to women and girls. Locally he is further aggrieved with the mid-season administrative goalpost‑moving that could cause previously “safe” clubs to be relegated to a lower tier. It is just another of the concerns being encountered by Sweeney and the RFU’s interim chair, Sir Bill Beaumont, as they continue their nationwide “road show” aimed at fragmenting the SGM vote.
For many, though, it is too little too late with the furore over Sweeney’s pay – £742,000 basic salary plus a bonus of £348,000 in a year when the RFU reported an operating loss of almost £40m – still rippling through the cash-strapped community game. Stephenson says: “I have less of a problem with his salary in some respects but he’s taken a £348,000 bonus while making 42 staff redundant. Those people have got mortgages to pay and lives to lead. And, at a local level, we’re also the ones who suffer. It’s the kids I’m worried about. Where are they going to go and play their rugby? They don’t play it at many schools any more. They only play it with us or at other rugby clubs. It just makes me so cross.”
The RFU will point to the (reassuringly expensive) review conducted by the law firm Freshfields which found their “long-term incentive plan scheme” to be “appropriate in light of the goals it sought to achieve”. Such pieces of work, however, do not venture beyond their specific terms of reference and miss the nub of the issue generating so much anger and mistrust.
Among other things this one skated over the judgment of those in high office, their ability to read the room and the reality that they are effectively running a cooperative rather than some massive private corporation. And the biggest, most unforgivable aspect of all? The loss of yet another opportunity to write about the actual bloody sport.
