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'I currently have no income and I'm stuck here… that's not an ideal scenario'

By Liam Heagney
Credit: Daniel Kenny

It’s been an emotional rugby narrative of the coronavirus pandemic, the pay cuts at the elite end of the game around the world. There is a macabre interest into how the Premiership elite or the Super Rugby stars are reacting to losing a chunk of their salary, but spare a thought for the low-earning professionals at the bottom of the game’s food chain.   

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While the likes of Itoje, Tuilagi and so many other household names are still coining it given the extent of their money-spinning contracts in the first place, those eking a living out playing in the sport’s lower reaches have had their income decimated. 

Take Irishman Danny Kenny. His career claim to fame was 40 minutes off the Premiership bench for London Irish in front of more than 23,000 in a November 2013 defeat at the Welford Road home of Leicester, the then defending champions. Since that sole top-flight appearance at the age of 25, he has earned his living as a journeyman pro, Doncaster, Ealing and London Scottish all English pit stops on a low frills adventure that eventually took him to Italy in summer 2018.

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It is there that a nightmare unimaginable to the likes of Itoje and co unfolded in recent weeks. With no indication the Serie A season would be terminated, Kenny flew back to Bergamo on March 10 after visiting his ill father in Ireland thinking there was still a campaign to finish with Valpolicella, the club near Lake Garda that operates in a championship a step below the better known Top 12.

Within days, everything radically changed. Italy went into lockdown and Kenny has effectively spent the last month under house arrest, his only outlet a rare trip to the supermarket to stock up on food paid for with his own savings after he was told the club salary he was contractually entitled to through to the summer was scrapped due to the rugby season ending prematurely.

It’s incredible adversity, one with no end yet in sight as the Italian government restrictions have just been extended into May leaving Kenny fearing that even the player-coaching contract he has for next season might now not be honoured.

“It’s obviously pretty worrying,” he told RugbyPass, taking a break from the endless routine of reading, drawing and virtual table quizzes with his team-mates that have become his groundhog lockdown existence living in an apartment with no access to a garden. “I have been told they are unable to pay me for the rest of the season, so I currently have no income and I’m stuck here. That is not an ideal scenario to be in. 

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“I do think of the bigger picture scenario. I’m healthy but not having a source of income and not having a job is a whole new grasp of reality to me. I have another year’s contract here next year but if I’m not being paid for the rest of the year, who knows what state rugby will be in next year. 

“A lot of clubs rely on sponsorship and individual sponsorship. Our club is essentially sponsored by one individual and their company is currently recording about €400,000 a month in losses so to a lot of companies, sponsorship is going to be the last thing on their list. It’s going to be needing to recover and looking after your own employees. Sponsoring a club isn’t necessarily going to be on top of your priorities.”

Part of Kenny’s monastic routine is mapping the level of new virus cases in Italy, particularly as Bergamo, where he flew into pre-lockdown, is only a short spin up the road and was the worst-affected area in the country for quite a considerable time. It’s why limitations on daily life in the Verona region have been so harsh.

“Our lockdown measures are very severe. We had been told April 10 was the date (for easing them) and now they are saying it won’t be until May. It’s quite a long haul to be stuck in an apartment. You can feel oppressed but you have to remember we’re still one of the lucky ones, we’re healthy and safe.

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“When this first started I struggled because I had a routine, a schedule pretty much for the last eight to ten years. I was frustrated with not having a routine, not really having a purpose in my day, but you get accustomed to it. You make yourself productive… yes, essentially (it is house arrest). We have had police cars going past blaring sirens telling you to stay home and if anything it has intensified as it has progressed. 

“You’re only allowed out for emergencies or to do a food shop. If you’re out you have to have a document from the government saying why you’re going out, what time you left, the date, what type of ID you brought with you, how long you think you will be out for. 

“If you’re stopped and don’t have these documents you’re fined anything from €3,000 up. I have been to the shop three times in the lockdown and I have been stopped by the police twice on the way home. They check your documents, ask where you have been, how long you have been, make sure your documents match the time frame.”

It’s a draconian existence that has left Kenny thankful for being so dedicated to his trade, putting whatever little money he could away over the years for fear a rainy day might ever arise. This good habit has proven all the more useful given the slow reaction of the Italian government to help people who have lost their jobs. Unlike the furlough system in Britain or the covid payment in his native Ireland, there was no assistance until a scheme was unveiled at the start of last week. Even that will take quite a while to provide any payout assuming he is successful.

“It’s a huge application process. You have to be resident of Italy, have an Italian bank account, have a registration with the Italian government. I have all that so I’m going to apply but the waiting list is meant to be incredibly long and they’re dealing with all the sportspeople who make less than €10,000 a year first and then dealing with the rest after… I had savings in the bank from playing over the last few years and my expenses are pretty limited. It’s just wifi and food. In this situation, I’m okay with spending. I’m not in any financial difficulty thankfully.”

That’s just as well. If Kenny put his sports management degree to use or stuck with a marketing job he had before playing rugby professionally, he wouldn’t be stuck in isolation in Italy and feeling uncertain if he has employment next season. Yet, he wouldn’t change it for the world. He just adores the game, even though he isn’t starring at an elite level. “Ideally I’d like to be representing Ireland at the next World Cup but that isn’t going to happen,” quipped the back row who turns 32 in July.

“I just love the game. That’s what is pushing me, I love playing. It’s a passion and I want to play for as long as possible. I have always enjoyed it and that is what is pushing me to stay at it. I’m much happier doing a job I love rather than sitting at a desk and potentially making double, triple my salary but being unhappy, waiting for the weekend. I look forward to every day of playing, training and coaching.

“My last year at London Scottish (2017/18), I said to myself that if I didn’t get a Premiership offer at the end of that season I’d look to use rugby to experience something else, something new. I felt I’d given a lot to rugby and needed to realistic. I’d always backed myself to be a top-level player but to be signed by a Premiership club at the age of 31 as a back row is quite rare. If you’re an overseas back row at that age you have got to be an ex-international. 

“I always had it in the back of my mind while I had no major commitments, why not experience rugby while I still can? I’d never heard of Valpolicella. I was approached by a different club in Italy maybe three or four years ago who I’d heard of but I never heard of Valpolicella. I’m really happy. It has one of the most humbling experiences I have had in rugby as a professional. The reason is I’m quite fortunate to be part of a club who knows who they are and what they represent. You don’t really find that very often within a Championship squad.”

Kenny sounds the epitome of all the hard-working pros who enthusiastically make up the numbers and give the sport its depth underneath the layer of stars. He’ll put up with all sort of difficulty and just get on with it, as evident in his current predicament in Italy. But there is one sliding doors moment he’d love to fix if he ever had his time over again.

“Any club I have been in I have always been 100 per cent committed to the cause, committed to bettering myself, but I have one regret that sticks in my mind. When in UCD I played for Connacht Eagles a few times. I’d been down there, built a good camaraderie, and was then was asked to play against an American select team. On my drive down I got a call from Leinster asking me to play against Bristol in the British and Irish Cup (April 2013). I was on the bench for Connacht and Leinster told me I’d be starting at six for them. 

“I still drove to Connacht to let them know, talked to them and made the decision to start for Leinster in a competitive game rather than sub for Connacht in a friendly. But the day of the game they brought Rhys Ruddock down from London because he didn’t get enough game time against Wasps in Europe. He started ahead of me and Leinster gave me the last four minutes. 

“I never got to go back down to Connacht after that. In terms of rugby that was my only regret, that I didn’t stick with a club who were pursuing me. That day didn’t turn out very well for me.” 

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Jon 52 minutes ago
Jake White: Are modern rugby players actually better?

This 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”?

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j
john 3 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

But 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.

15 Go to comments
A
Adrian 5 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

Thanks Nick The loss of players to OS, injury and retirement is certainly not helping the Crusaders. Ditto the coach. IMO Penny is there to hold the fort and cop the flak until new players and a new coach come through,…and that's understood and accepted by Penny and the Crusaders hierarchy. I think though that what is happening with the Crusaders is an indicator of what is happening with the other NZ SRP teams…..and the other SRP teams for that matter. Not enough money. The money has come via the SR competition and it’s not there anymore. It's in France, Japan and England. Unless or until something is done to make SR more SELLABLE to the NZ/Australia Rugby market AND the world rugby market the $s to keep both the very best players and the next rung down won't be there. They will play away from NZ more and more. I think though that NZ will continue to produce the players and the coaches of sufficient strength for NZ to have the capacity to stay at the top. Whether they do stay at the top as an international team will depend upon whether the money flowing to SRP is somehow restored, or NZ teams play in the Japan comp, or NZ opts to pick from anywhere. As a follower of many sports I’d have to say that the organisation and promotion of Super Rugby has been for the last 20 years closest to the worst I’ve ever seen. This hasn't necessarily been caused by NZ, but it’s happened. Perhaps it can be fixed, perhaps not. The Crusaders are I think a symptom of this, not the cause

15 Go to comments
T
Trevor 8 hours ago
Will forgotten Wallabies fit the Joe Schmidt model?

Thanks Brett.. At last a positive article on the potential of Wallaby candidates, great to read. Schmidt’s record as an international rugby coach speaks for itself, I’m somewhat confident he will turn the Wallaby’s fortunes around …. on the field. It will be up to others to steady the ship off the paddock. But is there a flaw in my optimism? We have known all along that Australia has the players to be very competitive with their international rivals. We know that because everyone keeps telling us. So why the poor results? A question that requires a definitive answer before the turn around can occur. Joe Schmidt signed on for 2 years, time to encompass the Lions tour of 2025. By all accounts he puts family first and that’s fair enough, but I would wager that his 2 year contract will be extended if the next 18 months or so shows the statement “Australia has the players” proves to be correct. The new coach does not have a lot of time to meld together an outfit that will be competitive in the Rugby Championship - it will be interesting to see what happens. It will be interesting to see what happens with Giteau law, the new Wallaby coach has already verbalised that he would to prefer to select from those who play their rugby in Australia. His first test in charge is in July just over 3 months away .. not a long time. I for one wish him well .. heaven knows Australia needs some positive vibes.

21 Go to comments
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