You may have noticed that the sports pages are less, well, sporty than they once were. There is rather more chance of reading stern-faced stories about Sir Jim Ratcliffe and the Glazers or Manchester City’s latest legal dispute than, say, the muddy winter joys of grassroots rugby union. It is the way of the modern world and, anyway, England playing Scotland in the Six Nations this Saturday is a bigger deal, right?
Well, yes and no. If you are counting the beans inside the Rugby Football Union’s offices in Twickenham there is barely a contest. The Six Nations annually bankrolls the rest of the domestic game: it is the commercial goose that lays the golden Gilbert‑shaped eggs. Never mind the scoreboard, let’s keep the corporate guests well fed and watered. It’s all about the bottom line.
Stephenson also reckons some RFU officials are “living in cloud cuckoo land” when they seek to offset the falling numbers in adult male participation with healthier figures relating to women and girls. Locally he is further aggrieved with the mid-season administrative goalpost‑moving that could cause previously “safe” clubs to be relegated to a lower tier. It is just another of the concerns being encountered by Sweeney and the RFU’s interim chair, Sir Bill Beaumont, as they continue their nationwide “road show” aimed at fragmenting the SGM vote.
For many, though, it is too little too late with the furore over Sweeney’s pay – £742,000 basic salary plus a bonus of £348,000 in a year when the RFU reported an operating loss of almost £40m – still rippling through the cash-strapped community game. Stephenson says: “I have less of a problem with his salary in some respects but he’s taken a £348,000 bonus while making 42 staff redundant. Those people have got mortgages to pay and lives to lead. And, at a local level, we’re also the ones who suffer. It’s the kids I’m worried about. Where are they going to go and play their rugby? They don’t play it at many schools any more. They only play it with us or at other rugby clubs. It just makes me so cross.”
The RFU will point to the (reassuringly expensive) review conducted by the law firm Freshfields which found their “long-term incentive plan scheme” to be “appropriate in light of the goals it sought to achieve”. Such pieces of work, however, do not venture beyond their specific terms of reference and miss the nub of the issue generating so much anger and mistrust.
Among other things this one skated over the judgment of those in high office, their ability to read the room and the reality that they are effectively running a cooperative rather than some massive private corporation. And the biggest, most unforgivable aspect of all? The loss of yet another opportunity to write about the actual bloody sport.
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