Why Charles Piutau's million pound Bristol move is bad for rugby
Late last week it was announced that Charles Piutau’s much celebrated move to Ulster will be considerably shorter than the Belfast side would have liked.
In a shock move, newly relegated Bristol have captured the signature of the former All Black, though not until the 2018/19 season.
Already earning a reported £600,000 a year as the best-paid back three player in the world, reports have put Piutau’s new salary somewhere around the £1million mark, which could make him the richest player in the world depending on other moves between now and then. Plenty will be written declaring the move bad for the Pro 14, for all clubs and for rugby as a whole. These are fair comments, but it’s also worth considering the negative effects this situation is likely to have on the players themselves.
It’s hard to feel sympathy for the likes of Piutau and Dan Carter, earning lucrative pay cheques for chucking a bit of leather about, but looking at the bigger picture reveals some worrying signs for other players. I wrote a few days ago about the dangers of elevating individuals to superstar status at the expense of everyone else, so I don’t want to retread old ground with this one.
However with financial stability in rugby union still some way off, it can’t be ignored that Bristol are taking a big risk by splashing the cash in such a fashion. If this gamble fails to pay off it won’t be the likes of Piutau, Ian Madigan and Steven Luatua that suffer, but the smaller names and up and coming players that’ll be first on the chopping block.
This strategy may well work out for Bristol. They’ve invested heavily in facilities and players and have as good a chance as anyone of “doing an Exeter” and going from a Championship side to top-flight contenders in the next few years. But the players currently at the club are going to have a hard time breaking into the side if the player in front of them in the queue is being paid Kanye West-money, even if that player is out of form.
Even if we ignore the potential problems signings like these have for the clubs they go to, they nonetheless have repercussions elsewhere. Salaries, pretty much as a rule, only go in one direction. If Maro Itoje gets his rumoured £1million+ deal when he signs his next contract, what does the next superstar get? And the one after that? There’s big money in rugby, but nowhere near enough to sustain that.
Whilst increasing wages seem at first glance like they’re great for the players and a necessary evil for everyone else, it could be argued that the power dynamic isn’t quite as clear cut as all that. If a club is paying a player through the nose, they’re going to want to bleed every penny out of them to get the best return on investment. We’ve already questions being raised about Northampton’s treatment of George North’s concussion problems, testament to how desperate clubs are to keep their highest paid players on the field, and when players are bringing in huge stacks of cash it makes it much harder for them to argue against unfair playing conditions.
It’s telling that in all the controversy surrounding the global rugby calendar and other player disputes, poor pay is rarely if ever discussed as an issue, at least in the top flight game. Instead, the RPA has argued against an increasingly packed calendar and poor welfare support. Very few players have complained about not being paid enough, because they are instead focusing on addressing the real issues that affect them day to day. Rising wages serve as a convenient smokescreen to mask the increasingly harsh demands the modern game puts on players.
Where wages are an issue is in the lower leagues of the game. Given the struggles even Championship players face, it’s incredibly hard to justify the more lucrative contracts we’re seeing nowadays.
It’s not that Bristol should be sharing their wealth with their fellow Championship contenders, but that huge investment like this represents a mindset that focuses only on the immediate future rather than long-term.
Clubs like Doncaster and Jersey cannot hope to match these enormous sums anytime soon. What this means is that whilst Bristol might see some short term returns from their investment, they’re only serving to widen the chasm between the haves and the have-nots. The poorer clubs will be forever playing catch up, assuming they can stay afloat at all.
This removes a vital part of the infrastructure of the professional game. Lower league clubs should be seen as opportunities for new players to grow and develop before stepping up into an increasingly competitive top division.
It makes perfect sense that there should be more money in the Premiership than the lower leagues, but if the only way to survive as a rugby player is to attach yourself to a club with a sugar daddy we’ll end up with lots of players on unsustainably large wages and a load more on nothing.
Few people will begrudge the likes of Piutau for trying to capitalise while the money’s good. Rugby careers are short and players are trying to maximise their earning potential in order to provide for their families.
But in amongst all the talk decrying player greed or the problems clubs will have adapting to the increased demands of agents, we should spare a thought for the players at the lower end of the financial totem pole. There’s a difference between trickle-down economics and standing on top of a cliff and taking a whizz onto the plebs below.
Comments on RugbyPass
Christie is not Sottish, like the majority of the Scotland team.
2 Go to commentsHold the phone, decline over-rated. Is it a one game, dead cat bounce or the real thing? Has the Penney dropped? Stay tuned.
44 Go to commentsTotally deserved win for the Crusaders Far smarter than the Chiefs who seem to be avoiding the basics when it matters Hotham showed them what was missing and Hannah seems a real find - a tad light but that can be fixed over time
8 Go to commentsGreat insight into the performance culture with Sarries and I predict Christie will be a fixture in the Scotland team now for some time to come. However, he is slightly missing his own point around Scotland “being soft” when he cites physicality examples in defence of that slight. The issue is much closer to the example he referenced around feeling off before a game but being told “it doesn’t matter, you can still play well” by Farrell. Until Scotland can get their psyche in that square, they will carry on folding under extreme pressure…
2 Go to comments> We are having to adapt, evolve and innovate more than when we were in Super Rugby where there was only really one style that everybody had to play to gain the most success. Have = able to? Interesting what that one style might be? I thought SA sides still had bad tours now, or at least bad schedule, months away? Those extra few hours flights have to be a killer though, no surprise to see their sides doing so badly at the start of the season each year. I wouldn’t enjoy that unfairness as a supporter.
5 Go to commentsThe problem for NZ, and Aus, is they ripped up the SR model and lost a massive chunk of revenue that hasn’t been replaced. Don’t forget SA clubs went North because they were left with no choice, Argy unceremoniously binned and Japan cast adrift. Now SR wasn’t perfect, far from it, but they’ve jumped into something without an effective plan, so far, to replace what they’ve lost. The biggest revenue potential now lies in Japan but it won’t be easy or quick to unlock, they are incredibly insular in culture as a nation. In the meantime, there is a serious time bomb sitting under SH rugby and if it happens then the current financial challenges will look like a picnic. IF the Boks follow their provincial teams and head north then it’s revenue meltdown. Not guaranteed to happen but the status quo is a very odd hybrid, with the Boks pointing one way and the clubs pointing the other way. And for as long as that remains then the threat is real.
44 Go to commentsI think Etene has had some good tuition, likely while at the Warriors to be a professional that helped his rugby jump, but he was certainly thrown in the deep end way too early. Should have arguably 20 less SR caps, and therefor a way better record that he does at his age, but his development would have been fast tracked by the need to satiate his signing away from league. Again, credit to him and others that he has done it so well. Easy to fall over under that pressure in the big leagues like that but he kept at it when I myself wasn’t sure he was good enough.
1 Go to commentsAwesome story. I wonder what a bigger American (SA) scene might have mean for Brex.
1 Go to comments“Johnny McNicholl and the Crusaders” save a Penney. Who has been in camp this week and showed them how to play?
8 Go to commentsSo, reports of the Crusaders’ demise / terminal decline are perhaps just - slightly - premature/exaggerated…? 🤔 Will we see a deep-dive into that by the estimable Rugbypass scribes, and maybe one or two mea culpas? Thought not.
8 Go to comments1. The Chiefs are rudderless without DMac, which enhances his AB chances 2. Chiefs pack are powderpuffs. The hard men arent there anymore 3. They had their golden title chance last yr and wont threaten this yr. Gone in second round of playoffs.
8 Go to commentsHonestly, why did you have to publish such a foolish article the day they play us? 😂
44 Go to comments> They are not standalone entities. They are linked to an amateur association which holds the FFR licence that allows the professional side to compete in the league. That’s a great rule. This looks like the chicken or egg professional scenario. How long is it going to be before the club can break even (if that is even a thing in French rugby)? If the locals aren’t into well it would be good to se them drop to amateur level (is it that far?). Hope they can reset from this level and be more practical, there will be a time when they can rebuild (if France has there setup right).
1 Go to commentsWhat about changing the ball? To something heavier and more pointed that bounces unpredictably. Not this almost round football used these days.
35 Go to commentsThis is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?
35 Go to commentsWow, didn’t realise there was such apathy to URC in SA, or by Champions Cup teams. Just read Nick’s article on Crusaders, are Sharks a similar circumstance? I think SA rugby has been far more balanced than NZs, no?
4 Go to commentsBut here in Australia we were told Penney was another gun kiwi coach, for the Tahs…….and yet again it turned out the kiwi coach was completely useless. Another con job on Australian rugby. As was Robbie Deans, as was Dave Rennie. Both coaches dumped from NZ and promoted to Australia as our saviour. And the Tahs lap them up knowing they are second rate and knowing that under pressure when their short comings are exposed in Australia as well, that they will fall in below the largest most powerful province and choose second rate Tah players to save their jobs. As they do and exactly as Joe Schmidt will do. Gauranteed. Schmidt was dumped by NZ too. That’s why he went overseas. That why kiwi coaches take jobs in Australia, to try and prove they are not as bad as NZ thought they were. Then when they get found out they try and ingratiate themselves to NZ again by dragging Australian teams down with ridiculous selections and game plans. NZ rugby’s biggest problem is that it can’t yet transition from MCaw Cheatism. They just don’t know how to try and win on your merits. It is still always a contest to see how much cheating you can get away with. Without a cheating genius like McCaw, they are struggling. This I think is why my wise old mate in NZ thinks Robertson will struggle. The Crusaders are the nursery of McCaw Cheatism. Sean Fitzpatrick was probably the father of it. Robertson doesn’t know anything else but other countries have worked it out.
44 Go to commentsIt could be coincidental or prescient that the All Blacks most dominant period under Steve Hansen was when the Crusaders had their least successful period under Todd Blackadder and then the positions reversed when Razor took over the Crusaders.
44 Go to commentsDefinitely sound read everybodyexpects immediate results these days, I don't think any team would travel well at all having lost three of the most important game changers in the game,compiled with the massive injury list they are now carrying, good to see a different more in depth perspective of a coaches history.
3 Go to commentsSinckler is a really big loss for English rugby.
2 Go to comments