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37 of last season's Premiership players still have no new contract
By Jon Newcombe
The Rugby Players’ Association have confirmed that an entire squad’s worth of last season’s Gallagher Premiership players – including Virimi Vakatawa – are still without a contract just three weeks before the start of the 2024/25 season.
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Of the 185 players who left their top-flight clubs at the end of last season, 70 had no contract to move on to – a total slightly down from last summer’s record high of 80 left in the lurch.
With the new campaign commencing on September 20 with defending champions Northampton visiting beaten finalists Bath and Bristol due to travel to last season’s strugglers Newcastle, 37 of the 70 players left without a contract at the start of this summer are still hunting for a new deal.
The list features several high-profile players, including former France midfielder Vakatawa. He was released by Pat Lam’s Bristol after just a single season at Ashton Gate.
This lack of opportunity for so many players illustrates how employment opportunities in English rugby’s top flight continue to narrow following the devastating effects of Worcester, Wasps and London Irish going bust throughout the 2022/23 season, reducing the league from 13 to 10 teams.
Luke Cheyne, head of player development and well-being at the RPA, explained: “In the last few years we have lost three squads; 187 players were effectively made redundant and those contracts are effectively no longer available.
“This season we are still feeling the effects of everything that happened in 2022/23 with Wasps, Worcester and London Irish, salary cap changes and so on and so forth.
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“We have seen the change to smaller squad sizes, which is a sensible one, and there will probably be a little bit of difficulty whilst those changes happen.”