Over the years I have had the opportunity to get an insight into leadership within rugby clubs and how that can affect performances both on and off the field and it has caused me to think about what are the key drivers behind successful leadership within rugby clubs today. It is easy to look at the game and makes comments about what is relevant at what level of the game but categorically the tasks involved are still the same whatever level you are talking about.
For most clubs leadership comes from the top and invariably this starts with the Club Chairman, even at the top flight this is generally perceived as the top job within the clubs, very few treat it as purely an honorary, with a CEO below running the club. In either case I see the role as critical for the future success and survival of any club. It is the decisions that this person makes that generally determines that fate of the club.
Business Planning
And generally there is so much to consider at this stage what I often find astounding is how very few clubs actually have a business plan for the year ahead let alone a five year plan. I can’t see how at any level of the game, that this isn’t a critical part of a club, with so many business men involved within the club I can’t understand why people don’t apply the same principles with their clubs that they would in their own businesses. If you don’t have a business plan how do you know what the club is aiming for and what direction you want the club to go in.
The fundamentals of the plan should cover everything that is involved with running a club, such as Income – where is it coming from, how good is it, how is it affecting the club, how do we increase it; Expenditure – where is your money going, are we spending wisely, are we wasting money; Facilities – how good are they, are they in good repair, do they meet the ambitions of the club, are they fully utilized in terms of revenue generation; Players – How good are they, are they suitably being supported by coaching, medical and fitness staff, how are the club going to recruit more players and at which standard, do we need to remunerate our players; Support staff – what areas do they cover, are we covering off all of areas that need to be addressed. Future – where do we want to be and how are we going to get there.
With all these areas thought through the club can think take a view on how realistic they are and whether there might need to be a readjustment on them. There is no point a level 5 or 6 club aiming to be in the Premiership in 5 years because it just isn’t realistic and it grossly underestimates the performance levels required just to stay up in the league above. Jersey, who seem to have had no end of capital available, still haven’t quite mastered their rise having reached Level 2 on what has been a 10 year plus journey, where they significantly increased the funding every year to achieve success, but that was all part of their business plan and they knew where they wanted to go. The only question I would ask is whether they got there as fast as they would have liked and if there was anything they had learnt along they way that would change if they were to do it again.
Income
The survival of every club comes down to how they raise their income every year, and quite often clubs make the mistake of making short term decisions that actually go on to have a greater impact on the club in the long term. There are several areas that clubs do get their income from and these are membership subscriptions, sponsorship, events and social occasions, and revenue generated by your facilities. What I find concerning is how many clubs focus on certain revenues at the expense of others. Each one can have an impact on the other without people realising it. Membership subscriptions are often a great health check on how big the club is and how many individuals there are within a club who may help out as volunteer coaching or support staff, attend social occasions and actual may also show interest in sponsoring certain things that the club is doing. However as I have started to find, any club that does not get a revenue from their clubhouse is going to be severely impacted. On a weekly basis the club should be clearing a certain amount over the bar AND generating out additional revenue from hiring out the venue and other community events. Most clubs so often overlook that their facilities could generate significantly more revenue if they opened them up to the community for others to use and benefit from. Using Richmond as an example, they generate so much revenue from hiring out their facilities to the corporate community to hold 7s tournaments there. They have the Law Society 7s, The Lloyds 7s, The Surveyor 7s and Rugby Rocks 7s just to name a few. All of these events generate significant revenue for the club.
Expenditure
What I find interesting when it comes to expenditure is how little some clubs are aware of what they spend money on. Most clubs are aware of some of the basics such as staff costs, facilities costs and basic operational costs such as kit and balls for the season but what I have think is often missed within budgets is an awareness on an appreciation for large capital expenditure. Most clubs fail to plan for significant expenses such as buying a new scrum machine, renewing the floodlights, buying a new boiler. These are so often overlooked that clubs don’t include a line in their budgets to actual put money aside for these type of expenses which can so often blow an annual budget out of the water.
During my time at Richmond the one defining lesson I took away from the club was how they set about planning their budgets for the season ahead. The always seemed to plan the season ahead’s budget based on the earnings of the previous season’s earnings, never presuming that they were going to do better that year than they had they year before. The one advantage that they have had is that to date the current board have not had the impact of relegation in almost 15 years and that can make lives easier.
I do feel that clubs need to be conducting an audit of their expenses at the end of each year and evaluating whether they can improve the costs so that the operating margins of doing business as usual can be improved. They might even find some obscure expenses that aren’t needed or are a curious leftover agreement by a previous administration that was needed at the time but bears no relevance on the operations today
Facilities
I believe I have covered most of this off when looking at income, however i always find it curious why clubs don’t embrace the communities and run jazz clubs or bridge clubs as a regular way of pulling revenue into the clubhouse. Clubs really need to explore way in which the venue can be used on a daily basis throughout a year and not just on training nights and match days. Why a club would restrict it’s earnings to the 30 odd matches days a year and not look at the other 335 days and the opportunities is just folly.
But equally I feel that clubs don’t maintain their facilities very well and are often caught short when part of a building falls into disrepair and either significant investment is needed to fix the problem or leave it to rot and let that area become disused.
Players
No matter which club you are the players are the life blood of any club and they need to be valued in all manners as one of the most positive assets a club can have. These players whilst on the pitch are the physical embodiment of the club’s current fortunes, they are also the club’s future volunteers, administrative staff, and potential sponsors. Clubs need to invest, not necessarily money, but time and effort into developing these players, whether it be supporting them with their careers, creating a training environment that helps them thrive as individuals or for some just being the centre of their social life is enough.
Recruiting players couldn’t have been harder these days, players are leaving in droves between the ages of 18 – 22 and retention at clubs for that age group across the country is poor. And yet when we made the move to build the Saxons Sevens club because of our concern about our player base, we found that the easiest age group for us to recruit from was that age group, and when we looked at why, I can only say that we created an environment that attracted those players. Put simply we created a safe, structured environment for them to enjoy rugby with their peers. Over time that has lead to players from that age group asking to push on and be more involved not only with the club but actually to get involved with the senior teams. I wouldn’t recommend our process because I feel it is unique to us as a 7s club and not necessarily transferable to the 15s format, but I do believe that clubs need to stop pushing a culture and certain way of doing things and to start engaging these players on the culture and environment they want to be involved with and then work with them to create it. I’ll cover this on another blog.
Support Staff
If clubs actually conducted an audit of who does what within their clubs I think not only would it surprise them on what is being done but also who is doing, but it might actually cause them some concern, as particularly with smaller clubs it generally is the same people over and over again who are doing all of the work. Once you have covered off all of the work that goes on with getting the players on the pitch; coaches, fitness staff, physios, team managers and sometimes even doctors. Then looking at the facilities staff; groundsmen, bar staff, cleaners, matchday staff. And then you start looking at the administrative staff; Chairman, Finance Manager, Club Secretary, Commercial Manager, Chairman of Youth, Youth Coordinator etc., etc.
Already just in writing this out you start to get a sense of scale most clubs need to be operating at, and worryingly some of the roles aren’t free, and they require some level of remuneration, particularly the higher up the leagues you go. And worse yet, I would be concerned that when most clubs did an audit of the skills the individuals had doing certain roles they not only might be alarmed but also it might highlight why certain aspects of the club didn’t run the way they expected.
The most part of conducting an audit of any capacity when reviewing support staff is to be very conscious of what your true volunteer base is, sometimes it is better to have a person doing the job than none at all, the individual may not have the right skill set but if they are prepared to role up their sleeves for the club, don’t just dismiss it. Maybe considered how you can support or develop that person so that they are better able to do the role, you might just find that that might be more to your advantage.
Future
Planning all of the above does wonders for conducting a health check on your club but if the information isn’t used positively to shape the future of the club then what was the point. Every club needs to have a plan for where they want to go and having a business plan helps them understand how they are going to get there and sometimes even goes as far as mapping out the steps along the way. Every club needs to have a clear vision of their future, and sometimes, just being in existence in 2 years time is as far as the plan needs to go.
There are no hard and fast rules with how to build a club business plan, almost every single one would be unique because every club is blessed and sometimes cursed in different ways. Given the challenges that we face economically i think the task is even more important today than it ever was, and it isn’t restricted to just the UK. Any club globally that doesn’t think these steps are important might just find themselves struggling for survival before they know it.
