Game in England is heading for a storm

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THE return of England A – the national second team known as the Saxons when they last played seven years ago – is good news for the English game. It has two overriding benefits. It will help to redress the shortage of matches with tier two nations, who need the competitive step up provided by tier one nations to boost their development. At the same time it will also benefit English rugby by addressing the lack of playing experience at international level for promising players and coaches, selected from the Premiership, and hopefully the Championship.

The first match since the Saxons 2016 tour of South Africa – in which they won the series 2-0 against South Africa A – will be against Portugal during the 2024 Six Nations, when they face Os Lobos at Welford Road on February 25, the day after England meet Scotland at Murrayfield.

Playing against a Portugal team that scored a stylish first World Cup win over quarter-finalists Fiji should provide promising players like Newcastle winger Adam Radwan and Northampton flanker Tom Pearson a chance to press their cases for more full caps. It should also be a key platform for addressing the staggering neglect since 2019, and before, of developing a new generation of England props who are first and foremost Test-standard scrummagers.

Unfortunately, RFU chief executive Bill Sweeney allowed Eddie Jones to not only pocket a huge salary, but also spend so much on his England squad expansion that they shelved the national second team, and the benefits it brought – until now.

It smacks of a PR exercise by an RFU hierarchy which has lost public support through pedantic virtue-signalling – of which the decision to axe ‘Saxons’ as a non-inclusive name and revert to ‘A’, is just one example.

It highlights a much bigger failing within this RFU administration of a complete disconnect with large parts of the English rugby public.

This has been evident in over 20,000 empty seats at Twickenham for the World Cup warm-up against Fiji, and also a fall in numbers at matches in the ring-fenced Premiership so far this season.

Importantly, it includes a divorce from the volunteer army keeping community clubs the length and breadth of the country alive, despite battling a massive decline in male playing numbers – which Sweeney and the RFU Board have utterly failed to address. Pandering to woke sensitivities with name-changes is clearly a greater priority.

It is why, as we embark on a new season, English rugby union is likely to be engulfed in a storm which could shake its foundations.

Sweeney’s plans for the game in England have whipped up this storm, mainly because the imported American-franchise model he is attempting to impose is totally at odds with the culture of English rugby union.

Sweeney’s proposal, as enshrined in his new £296 million Professional Game Partnership (PGP), will see virtually the entire funding of the RFU targeted at 10 debt-laden, poorly run Premiership clubs – despite three clubs going bankrupt last season. Meanwhile, the 11 Championship clubs, whose annual funding was slashed without consultation by 75 per cent to a paltry £150,000 in 2020, will continue to live off scraps.

The same applies to the community clubs that are the backbone of the English game, and the nursery for future England players. They have seen their share of the RFU’s rugby investment fall from a near 50 percent split with the professional game in 2010 to a mere £20 million in 2022, with redundancies for over 60 RFU support staff for the community game incomprehensible considering the fall in male participation.

This allocation of resources contradicts the fundamental tenet of rugby union in England being a participation sport which has had significant social benefits for communities, and schools, throughout the country for the best part of 150 years.

Like all sports, rugby union has had its divisions and upheavals in the past, but until 2015 it appeared to be in relatively robust health in terms of public appeal, and the RFU’s administration and finances. Since then it has gone downhill faster than an avalanche, which the RFU’s mismanagement has accelerated rather than arrested.

This is encapsulated in Sweeney, having spent a good part of the World Cup in a luxurious five-star environment in France, returning to Twickenham with an agenda riddled with contradictions.

He began by singing the praises of the French system, and emulating it, saying: “We have seen what has happened in France. They have built their success on a crop of young players like Antoine Dupont… They have carefully nurtured those players – winning U20 matches”.

However, in the process, the RFU chief executive chose to ignore the glaringly obvious point that this generation of French players honed its competitive edge in a French league system in which promotion-relegation is an enshrined concept. By contrast, Sweeney has presided over an English league system in which he has supported ring-fencing, through the suspension of promotion-relegation, and through restrictive ground criteria and funding.

“It smacks of a PR excercise by an RFU hierachy which has lost public support”

It is two months into the new season, but even now it is not clear whether a Championship club will be promoted, or what format will apply. For instance, will the play-off be shelved if the Championship winners do not meet Premiership ground criteria? Will any play-off be one match, or home and away, and decided on aggregate score?

Even more pressing is why the RFU approves the Premiership clubs’ imposition of ground criteria of 5,000 capacity stadiums – rising to 10,000 a year later – when Sale (4,479) and Newcastle (3,821) have had attendances below that in the last fortnight?

In the meantime, no-one in the top two leagues, or their supporters, knows what they are playing for.

That is a ludicrous situation, and the “Whens, Wheres, and Whys” are piling up outside the doors of Sweeney and the beleaguered RFU chairman, Tom Ilube, unanswered.

The most divisive of those is why Sweeney has pressed ahead with his PGP plans without negotiating with the Championship clubs, who are intrinsic to the RFU player development pathway, and to the two-league Premiership franchise structure he hankers after.

My understanding is that the Championship clubs will agree to nothing without proper consultation from the RFU/Premiership, including signed and sealed agreements on funding and promotion-relegation.

The return of England A is a rare item of good news, as long as it is not just being used as window-dressing by a failing RFU administration.