Don't blame the salary cap - why Premiership must start building instead of buying players
On the same week that Nigel Wray’s South African partners pulled out of Saracens due to the club’s ongoing financial losses, comments from Wasps director of rugby Dai Young that the “salary cap is an issue” could not have come at a worse time.
Speaking to ESPN.co.uk, Young brought up several issues with the cap, including that its recent increases were not allowing teams to contract more players, as top-tier internationals demanded more money as a result, squads across the competition were getting smaller in response and that if they weren’t prepared to pay their players market value, then “11 other clubs would”.
He also stated that “the Welsh and Irish players will get more rest and the Leinster side that beat Sarries will probably play together eight or nine times this season.”
It’s an interesting statement, especially when you factor in that many Guinness PRO14 sides, pretty much all those not among the Irish provinces, will operate on significantly smaller budgets than those of their Premiership rivals, yet they still have the depth to rotate and rest players.
Young has hit the nail on the head, though, in his assertion that the market value of top-tier internationals has increased rapidly in recent years, but what drives that is a recruitment-heavy market, something which Wasps have contributed to significantly over the last few years. An example of this would be one fringe international who was, this season, touted around Premiership clubs for a salary of £450k. That equates to roughly 15 senior academy contracts. That’s a trade-off which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Wasps are on their third set of academy coaching staff since Young arrived and the pathway from their junior academy to the first team has been barely trod by up-and-coming players. Since the quartet of Christian Wade, Elliot Daly, Billy Vunipola and Sam Jones burst on to the scene, the pickings have been slim for Wasps, with perhaps the two most prominent graduates being the Willis brothers, Jack and Tom, who have made the most of the injuries that have afflicted the club this season.
If you are not going to push through youngsters, allow them to train with the seniors and give them that opportunity, then there is no doubt you’re going to have a top-heavy squad, many of whom have been recruited on big money from other teams or countries.
The beauty of bringing through your own players and having them on senior academy contracts in your squad is that you can essentially write them off the salary cap, with the Premiership’s system of academy credits. This is something Saracens have had a lot of success with and other clubs, such as Gloucester and Exeter Chiefs, are also making effective use of. With increased funding and/or emerging talented crops of youngsters, it’s something which may well play an influential role in the fortunes of Sale Sharks, Leicester Tigers and Northampton Saints in the coming years, too.
The issue is not the salary cap, but how certain teams choose to play it.
Wasps have gone heavily down the recruit-first path and trimmed their squad size as a result, but they’re not alone in that regard. Bath have taken a similar journey and like Wasps, you see them struggle with their depth when injuries come knocking. In terms of the best 23s that those two sides can put out, irrespective of fitness, they are a match for anyone in Europe.
If that’s the approach you have decided to take, then fair enough, but it opens your club up to extraneous variables, like injury, potentially derailing your season. There are ways to approach a salary cap league and this is undoubtedly a risky way of doing it.
The whole purpose of a salary cap is to ensure the competition is as competitive as possible and this means that teams cannot hoard star players and lesser teams will be able to improve by acquiring higher calibre players who can’t fit in their current side’s cap. That does jar with some fans, who think it’s unfair that their club go to the effort of producing and developing a talented player to then see him join someone else, but this is the nature of a salary cap.
If you look at the NFL, the perennially competitive and effective teams are the masters of drafting new talent, evaluating it’s worth to the franchise and then opting either to pay them the big money themselves, or let them go test their value in free agency and potentially pick up a lucrative deal elsewhere.
Honestly, rugby clubs should be even more successful at doing that than NFL franchises.
Instead of working with a draft system, whereby it’s a lottery influenced by the ability of their scouts, rugby clubs operate an academy system and have unrivalled access to evaluate and improve the players they have coming through their pathway.
The senior academy at a Premiership rugby club should mirror the initial contracts that NFL rookies sign after they are drafted. This is the evaluation time.
You can identify who is vital to your club’s success and long-term vision and pay them accordingly, whilst others can be let go to teams who are willing to pay them more, or are more in need of their services. This group should be refreshed each year, with new players leaving school and graduating from the junior academy.
If you neglect that pathway, then you’re like an NFL team signing 90% of its talent through free agency. History shows us that this is not a particularly successful way of operating and often proves to be a very financially-costing mistake.
Even if you put the issue of trying to create a competitive tournament to one side for a moment, there are also very significant financial implications behind any movement to remove or expand the salary cap.
Of the 12 Premiership clubs, only Exeter recorded a profit during the last fiscal year, with Worcester Warriors showing the worst accounts in the competition, operating with a £4m loss.
Plenty of clubs are making strides to reduce their losses and become more sustainable, whether that’s through stadium expansion, playing games at bigger venues, increasing commercial opportunities or looking to expand in new markets, but it’s not something which will be solved overnight. This is why the salary cap has been set at the £7m mark for the foreseeable future.
The Premiership is believed to be on the verge of signing a new title sponsorship deal with US insurance giants Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., whilst a new TV deal will need to be negotiated for the 2021/22 season and onwards, so there will be opportunities to re-evaluate that figure over the coming years, but keeping it at its current level is not a bad move, irrespective of whether or not a handful of owners are willing to underwrite losses in a search for glory.
The salary cap promotes a competitive league, production of homegrown talent, a smaller and more organic rise in wages and responsible fiscal management.
Why would you want to end that?
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