LONG READ 'Things are still too quiet' - English rugby needs a transfer window

Imagine for a second if rugby union had a football-style transfer market. Who would be the Premiership’s Most Wanted Man?

The answer might be different for different clubs depending where their weak spots are but let’s assume a level playing field.

Fly-half remains the highest-paid position in the league. So would it be a 10?

The best 10 last season was Finn Russell. He was the key addition who has turned Bath from blusterers into champions. He cemented his status with the Lions in Australia. But Russell turns 33 this month. If a club is looking for long-term value – and sell-on possibilities – he is not your man.

Maro Itoje, the Lions captain, would be up there on any club’s wish list but again he turns 31 next month.

The Most Wanted would need to be a player in their mid-20s with a touch of X-factor about them, someone capable of elevating a team – and the game – to another level. It would have to be Louis Rees-Zammit.

I know, I know. He’s only just moved to Bristol. And rugby isn’t football so the whole idea is a fantasy. But indulge me for a moment beyond the individual to the concept and the idea that rugby union would benefit from its own version of deadline day.

Would the buzz that surrounds all that transfer business as the window inches closer to shutting really be such a negative for rugby?

The football template version with its bloated sums of money and its breathless reportage – spooling images of cars turning up at training grounds and the plotting of private jet flight paths – but even so it is hard not to be drawn in – especially if your club has skin in the game.

Would the buzz that surrounds all that transfer business as the window inches closer to shutting really be such a negative for rugby?

In the fight for eyeballs, the game needs all the additional attention it can generate for itself.

It has tried with the Netflix documentary – Six Nations: Full Contact was discontinued after two series – and it has tried with the name rebrand. Let’s see how the Gallagher PREM goes. It may, or may not, have a disruptor plotline to play with if R360 gets off the ground.

Transfer revolving doors are, though, the gift that keeps on giving. The drama and suspense, twists and turns, wins and let-downs suck you in window after window. Everyone has an opinion on whether the Premier League’s £125m man Alexander Isak was right to hold out for his move to Liverpool.

These sagas offer storylines which go beyond the pitch. The same goes for the IPL auction or the NFL draft – sideshows which can become the main show and which develop interest over and above the boundaries of the game itself.

Here is a bit of blue-sky thinking for the PREM. Why not create the league’s own transfer window – a fortnight, say, mid-season when clubs are given the opportunity, and the money, to bid for each others’ players?

Set aside £5m from central funding each season and divide it up equally so that each club has £500,000 to spend how they wish over and above any salary cap restrictions.

Each one could choose to blow it on a single top-end player or divide it between a couple of better-value additions. They might decide to sit on the money and prefer not to risk disrupting their current squad.

It becomes a game of strategy, a new and interesting test for directors of rugby. Which one of them will win the window?

The landscape in the Northeast has changed drastically over the summer with the acquisition of the Falcons by Red Bull. They are the hunters now rather than the hunted.

Artificially creating a transfer market in this way would be a fun addition for supporters. Nothing gets tongues wagging and opinions exchanged like transfer gossip.

It should be mandatory to announce the transfer fees too. We’re all nosey about the numbers.

The deals would not be in the same ballpark as Isak’s British record move to Anfield. Take off two noughts and we still wouldn’t be there, even for a Rees-Zammit, but the decimal point is not the point.

It is all about creating more ripples. Windows, deadline days and all the rest would bring more coverage on TV and radio and more column inches to the game, guaranteed. Speak the language of football and a sport instantly has an editor’s attention.

There is nothing actually prohibiting a transfer market in rugby union. One just hasn’t emerged naturally since the game went professional.

The reasons why are twofold. The clubs fear there is insufficient money to sustain it and contracts tend to be shorter than in football so it is less of a problem to wait until the end of them to sign a player.

That does not stop some in-contract transfers taking place.

Owen Farrell moved back to Saracens from Racing 92 at the end of last season for a fee in the region of £170,000 – which was somewhat less than the £430,000 the Parisians paid for the former England captain.

There have been other examples. Leicester paid a transfer fee of around £500,000 to Bath to sign George Ford mid-contract in 2017, the same summer as Bath paid the Ospreys £150,000 to bring Sam Underhill to The Rec.

Leicester paid an undisclosed transfer fee to sign Newcastle wing Adam Radwan midway through last season. Leicester needed a wing after the retirement of Anthony Watson and Newcastle needed the money so a deal was done.

The landscape in the Northeast has changed drastically over the summer with the acquisition of the Falcons by Red Bull. They are the hunters now rather than the hunted. With the financial firepower at their disposal now it will be interesting to see the direction they take with regard to recruitment.

Their approach so far has been to pick off players, largely from the southern hemisphere, whose contracts are up. So far, so rugby. But what if the Red Bulls pivot and decide to target those still in contract instead?

Newcastle made the statement cross-code signing of Va’aiga Tuigamala from Wigan for a world record £1m fee. They could, if they wanted to, start waving big money at some big-name players.

They are perfectly at liberty to approach any player who is in the last 12 months of their contract. Newcastle are operating miles below the salary cap, still, so can spend freely. And transfer fees themselves do not count towards the salary cap.

Red Bull is an organisation whose experience of sports markets has been built around the stable of football clubs they own where transfer fees are the norm.

Back in the Sir John Hall era, Newcastle made the statement cross-code signing of Va’aiga Tuigamala from Wigan for a world record £1m fee. They could, if they wanted to, start waving big money at some big-name players. Unilaterally creating their own mini market – albeit more of a stall – just as the season was about to start would certainly shake up the chicken coop. Is it going to happen? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t.

Things are still too quiet around rugby. Transfer to-and-fros would be one way of bringing the noise to the English game.