Rugby is a professional sport. It is one of the more popular sports to have turned professional only recently, despite having a long and storied history. Some of the greats of the game such as Bill Beaumont and Willie John McBride were only amateur rugby players and would go back to work on a Monday after playing for their country on a Saturday. Modern greats such as Martin Johnson, Sean Fitzpatrick, John Eales and Francois Pienaar played in both eras making the transition from amateur to professional and now we are in the professional era where all the players have ever known is to play rugby.
Looking however at the part of the game where people still go to work on a Monday, the leagues below the professional ranks, the professional era has had a consequence that has caused an imbalance. Players are being paid various rates, depending on the league, all the way down as far as level 8 and possibly 9 in the English rugby pyramid. There is nothing wrong with clubs paying players at this level, as a result of the game being professional the reimbursement of players for their services is perfectly legal within the rules of the game. However it is causing mismatches in games as by attracting better players to their club, some whose ability is far superior to the level of play of that division, teams are steamrolling through opposition who either have not the resources to pay players or chose to employ those resources in other areas of their club. This has caused a ‘haves and have-nots’ in the lower divisions of English rugby with heavily lopsided score lines and almost two tier leagues as those that pay players fight for division titles and those that don’t fight against relegation.
Where is the gain though? Even teams in the professional leagues are struggling to turn a profit so is this money going down a black hole? A lot of these teams that are paying players are not rising particularly fast through the ranks as in the divisions they rise to there are couple of other teams employing the same strategy, so they end up trying to recruit the same players and end up cannibalising each other and so do not get significantly better. An exception to this rule is Jersey, who in under 10 years have risen from the amateur leagues playing in what was London and South East divisions 1-4, up through the national leagues into the Championship, just one level below the Aviva Premiership.
Jersey are the prime example why outlawing paying players at a lower level would be a negative idea. It would embalm the status quo and not allow teams to rise up and take a place among the national divisions and even become a full time professional team. However a fine balance must be struck. A way of evening out the lower leagues so that games do not become one sided and that leagues don’t become two tier. Also clubs themselves need to look at what they are trying to achieve. Are they trying to be a true success story, like Jersey, or are they just trying to get a few cheap wins so that their rich benefactor can have bragging rights down the country club? If clubs are in the latter category they may want to rethink their current plans as for every team that rises through a couple of leagues on the back of some investment, there is a team that has dropped three or four leagues when the money has dried up. The players have moved on to teams who still have money and are willing to pay them, and the original player base the clubs had before they invested is no longer there as those players moved on to find rugby at other clubs when the paid players arrived.
For the latest sports injury news, check out our friends at Sports Injury Alert.
Thank you for reading. Please take a moment to follow my Twitter account –@LWOSRob. Support LWOS by following us on Twitter – @LastWordOnSport – and “liking” our Facebook page.
