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Don't blame the salary cap - why Premiership must start building instead of buying players

By Alex Shaw
James Haskell of Wasps

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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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Jon 8 hours 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”?

35 Go to comments
j
john 10 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.

44 Go to comments
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