The issue of player salaries and salary caps is a sensitive one in the lower levels of English rugby. Photo: Custom image
The allegations began back in September, about half an hour after the start of the first competitive game of the season. Fresh from promotion to the seventh tier of the English rugby union league system, Teddington ran out of the blocks against Hove but their opponents began to jeer: «Fwoar, how much are you paying?»
The 72–17 victory set the tone for Teddington's election campaign on two fronts. Firstly, they continued to win, securing another promotion. But they also continued to respond to similar ridicule.
“Every week it was: 'You didn't win the league, you bought it,'” explains Teddington halfback Bob Beavers. < /p>
This statement may seem strange to the uninitiated, but payouts to players at all stages of the rugby pyramid are booming. And according to rumors circulating in County League 1 Surrey/Sussex, Beavers is being paid £500 per game. That's exactly what Telegraph Sport made independently about a month ago.
“Apart from the Twickenham game last year, this might be the highlight of my rugby career because people think this slightly paunchy midfielder gets £500 a week,” laughs Beavers, 35. “I would love to agree, but this is not the club we are.”
Teddington insists they are not paying players. However, the chatter is growing quickly. History is full of clubs that climbed up the pyramid and then fell back down — and sometimes disappeared altogether — when the money ran out.
The issue of player pay in the men's «community game», defined as the third level and below, is causing irritation across the country and a grim omerta is swirling around.
Semi-professionalism is inherently ambiguous. Players in the eighth tier are believed to have received up to £300 in match fees. Others were persuaded to switch clubs because of the £20 difference in match fees. Telegraph Sport even reported on a transfer saga that saw two fifth-tier teams swap a sum of £6,000.
One person recalled being handed an envelope containing £300 on the touchline by a sponsor still in his kit. The former National 1 captain had a stack of £50 notes worth around £10,000 under his bed. Some particularly resourceful financiers are even reputed to cover their team's phone bills and weekly shopping expenses.
“This is more than the Wild West; it is deliberately destructive to itself,” is one of the harshest descriptions of the current semi-professional situation, with players often asking fourth-tier clubs for sign-on bonuses.
With three Premier League clubs and professional division Jersey RFC, which just took over the Championship, having collapsed since September 2022, how can so much money be spent on the lower leagues?
Teddington celebrate winning the Surrey 1 title after beating Eastbourne in March. Photo: Simon Ridler Workarounds for the salary cap
The National 1, Third Division club should rightfully be considered the crown jewel of English rugby. John Inverdale, chairman of the National Rugby League and a former BBC presenter, argues that the «commitment and quality» of the division means the players «deserve to be rewarded». The division extends from Devon, where Plymouth Albion is located, to Darlington Mowden Park. Traveling alone for a team is an expensive pleasure.
The community game has a soft salary cap: the RFU sets upper limits (“thresholds”) on player spending, known as “gross payouts,” at each level. Clubs must file declarations, and violations are punishable by loss of benefits such as travel support. The RFU cap for the third tier is £250,000 with an additional £25,000 for two player-coaches. For tier four (three National Team 2 affiliates) this is reduced to £125,000 plus £20,000 for player-coaches.
Regional 1, or level five, allows a threshold of £50,000 and a further £15,000 for player-coaches. At level six and below, players are not allowed any official payments, with the exception of one player-coach who is allowed £10,000. Reading the fine print helps because any “material benefit” must—or should—be declared. For example, clubs may build a gym on site but not provide memberships to commercial gyms without this being seen as a financial benefit. They may provide food during training, but not money for food.
Spending is allowed, and this is one way to break these rules. One source explained that one of his old clubs, playing in the sixth division that season, used his family address in Cardiff — 152 miles away — to legitimize his £160 match fee. He believed seven teammates had secured similar deals at a level where only £10,000 per player-coach is officially allowed.
Competitive clubs will push the boundaries, and this is compounded by the widespread perception that RFU benefits have become negligible since the pandemic, weakening any incentive to stay below wage thresholds.
However, this is too simplistic. universally tarnish payments as something bad. For example, match fees can keep someone in the game who would otherwise be lost to weekend shift work. And not everyone sacrifices sustainability for player payouts.
Havant is targeting level four and is considering whether and how to introduce rewards. The Rams' annual wage bill is around £140,000 and they have just finished second in National League 1 for the second season in a row. Representatives from both clubs stressed the importance of having reliable infrastructure in place should revenue dry up. Relying on one benefactor is dangerous…
Charlie Robson scores for the Rams in a 19-13 win over Richmond. Photo: Paul Clarke When the «daddy» disappears
In 2015, Hamish Barton moved to Old Elthamians, who impressively rose from seventh division to National 2 South. There was ambition driven by director of rugby Gavin Latch and great support from cybersecurity businessman Kobus Paulsen.
The high costs and peculiar setting (the club played its home matches at Eltham College on a pitch 100 meters from the dressing rooms) created «a very powerful siege mentality». There were boot deals, free sneakers and free gear. When the Old Elthamians were promoted to National Level 1, a trip to Marbella was even fully funded. There is no suggestion that payments exceeded the authorized threshold.
Match fees were generous, so it was not surprising that Old Elthamians recruited players from the Premier League and Championship. “When I started in OE, I think it was £100 to play and £100 to win,” Barton continues. “Then towards the end it was £150 to play and £150 to win, plus various fees. When I completed full pre-season I was given five thousand, then another five thousand when I had played 10 games and another when I had played 20 games. I think there was another clause about a bonus point of an extra £50.
“It used to be all paid in cash on the second Thursday of every month and you would receive an envelope with £50 notes. I remember that after being there for about 18 months, I kept all my money under my bed—literally. My wife was looking for something there one day and found a bunch of envelopes with £50 notes in them and said, “What the hell are these?” It was like, “Oh yeah, that's my income from rugby.”
«Existential Rise and Fall» is Barton's brief general reflection. Old Elthamians would have achieved the championship if they had beaten Ampthill in March 2019. Then, in December of that year, Paulsen died. The money was included in the will. Letters from lawyers were scattered throughout the area, and the players dispersed. One trainer was left with £45,000.
East Grinstead, who shared the league with Teddington this season, are another boom-bust story. Gavin Gleave, director of rugby and a major investor until a dispute with committee members led to him quitting the game in 2016. He estimates he spent around £500,000 running the club he and his three sons represented, up to National 3 London & South East, level five, costs within acceptable thresholds.
He wanted East Grinstead to be developed in its prime location, 10 miles from Gatwick airport, where “there wasn’t a single Premier club in sight.” -league or Championship.» could see.»
Adam Clayton captained East Grinstead for the last two seasons before Gleave left the club and was joined by coaches such as Justin Bishop, a former Republic of Ireland striker. Pay to players, including those from New Zealand, varied depending on experience and negotiations. Clayton «really enjoyed» his time at East Grinstead, while Gleave claims his maximum match fee was £125, with most players receiving only £25-100 for expenses. He also helped players find work and made one point that resonates across many sources: «The important thing was that the players could puff out their chests at work and say, 'Yeah, I get paid to play on Saturday.' It's a matter of ego, isn't it?
The end was driven by plans to install an artificial pitch that would «wash its face over a period of time» thanks to lease agreements. Serving the local community was vital to Gleave. However, fundraising stalled and resistance to change from influential non-playing members eventually won out. With six months remaining in the 2015/16 campaign, Gleave had come to terms with the severance of ties. “It tormented many,” he admits.
An urban legend tells of Gleave visiting the Saint Hill site and removing radiators from the walls. He welcomes the opportunity to set this record. “I would put a bar and a gym there,” Gleave said. “When we left, the two sponsors I worked with were still on the scoreboard. They removed the plywood. That's all. As a result, East Grinstead took a break and resumed in Sussex 1 at level nine in 2017–18.
Race to the top
Spending creates a ripple effect, as Gareth Lewis discovered. The head coach of Rotherham Titans has been involved in semi-professional rugby union since 1998. As coach and director of rugby at Huddersfield for ten years until last year, he witnessed a lot.
“We had one of the lowest budgets in National 2 [at Huddersfield] and we really punched above our weight,” explains Lewis. “But it was very difficult to recruit and maintain the playing squad. Yorkshire alone is very competitive and you have a lot of teams at that level – Otley, Wharfedale, Harrogate, Rotherham and now Leeds. We have a small pool of players, and it was very difficult to retain them.”
Money distorts the natural order of things, making the level of a club less important than its ability to pay. “I know of many examples in Yorkshire of clubs paying significant fees for matches in the seventh and eighth levels — payments of £200-£300,” continues Lewis. “I've seen players leave clubs for £20 more a game. This is madness».
At higher levels of the leagues, players can be persuaded to give up «full professional» jobs for good match fees to supplement a nine-to-five job. “You hear about Championship players on £12,000 wages,” Lewis says. “You can completely understand why someone would take a permanent job in the city and supplement it with a semi-professional contract, say, in one of the London clubs.”
Gareth Dyer served two stints as director of rugby at Preston Grasshoppers before retiring in 2022. The exodus was so distressing that it brought him to the brink. “We were promoted back to National 2 and we had a good young team,” he says. «I was excited. Then four players left because they could double their money from £150 to £300 a game.»
“I have a job and a young family and I’ve been thinking about this nonsense for too long,” adds Dyer. “You wake up at two or three in the morning, agonizing over certain decisions. Should I pay them more? Can I get this player from this club to replace him for less money? Can we increase our budget by taking money from other clubs? And I just thought, “Why am I doing this?”
One story about a fifth division player's three-year deal makes Dyer laugh, as if he's still trying to believe it: “We found a player, gave him about £170 a game for a three-year deal. Next thing he's knocking on the door and saying he wants to move closer to home, meaning he only has to travel 15-20 miles to play with us. We all knew that he was offered much more money to move to another club — Rossendale.
Dyer recalls Rossendale approaching the RFU, who told them the contract was legally binding. Rossendale will have to buy back his value. “It amounted to £6,000, essentially a transfer fee, and it was paid,” says Dyer. «It was just funny.» However, this trend continued. During Dyer's tenure, similar situations arose half a dozen times. Preston, who «played hard», received around £13,000 for the transfer.
Such was the arms race for players that Preston needed to protect its prolific youth section and found itself in a 'battle' to retain 15-year-olds who were already being snapped up by local rivals. “It really was like chaos,” Dyer says. “This is more than the Wild West — it deliberately destroys itself.”
As if to highlight the vicious cycle, Ian Jackson, Tarleton's chairman in the seventh tier, claims that Preston are a club that «preys on» their squad. “When they're offered £50 or £100 a week, players think, 'In a season I'll have £1,000 and I can take my girlfriend on holiday,'” says Jackson, who favors the manager traveling to every away game. which costs around £6,000 a year — players are paid too much.
“What they sometimes don’t realize is that they may end up in a second or third team where you don’t get paid and don’t have the same level of support and coaching as their original club. Or they get injured and put in a landfill, so they leave. You have short-termism from coaches who don't care, so they're scattered. Players are switched off and leave the game.»
Other stories told by Telegraph Sport include a sixth-tier club facing a «huge gap» because the first team relegated in 2023 gets salary, and the second — no. Training sessions, which double as a showcase for player selection, can be spicy, with players willing to commit to one team over another.
Elsewhere, a player has left an unpaid club for another, six miles down the road and five levels above the pyramid. There he was promised 150 pounds per game for the first team and 50 pounds for the second. After several appearances on the bench, he returned to his home club. When they proceeded to re-register the player, they discovered that those who had spent more money had not even registered him because there was no intention of selecting him for the first team.
Dyer initially hoped Covid had led to this. recalibration. Players' expectations soon rose. «A well-paid player would get £250 at National 2 in the north west,» he says. “Suddenly it went beyond £300 and became the baseline.”
The concept of «player power» and pay policy was raised by another source associated with a fourth division club: «I hear front row players saying they cost £250 a game. Is the market only about what you can afford, or is it about what the club next door will pay? Are you spreading pay across key positions or across the team?
Although the prevailing view is that fees are becoming increasingly rare and pay-to-play pay is becoming more popular and manageable, Dyer suspects that «many clubs did things like charge players £100 a week and pay «boot money» for the top separately. They just figured out how to relieve themselves of stress.
Taxation and the scope of declared sponsorship activities also remain sensitive issues. As always, to unravel the situation, you may have to force the situation.
Necessary solutions
Building momentum without paying should sometimes feel like players are trying to catch lightning in a bottle. Success breeds success, and circumstances play an important role. Teddington, who says paid players will harm them, has been helped by the move of university graduates to London. Their seniors now train once a week, which has proven popular, and strive to create a welcoming environment. Whether they pay or not, all clubs also strive to create unique benefits, such as quality coaching or premium services.
In response to the report, the RFU acknowledged the difficulty of monitoring player payments and urged anyone who suspects irregularities to contact them. They also insisted on conducting random checks and constantly reviewing the rules.
The push for improved operating standards, which would theoretically serve as a test of advanced teams' infrastructure, will be discussed at the RFU Council meeting on Friday and was also highlighted by a union spokesman: «Increasing operating standards and supporting investment in facilities.» within leagues and clubs is also important for financial sustainability; which we are working on with Championship clubs to grow the league, stimulate commercial interest and attract new fans to generate revenue to support player payments.»
Inverdale puts it more forcefully. He believes it's finally time for rugby union to grow up. “You go back to 1987 when the leagues were created,” he says. We should have thought about what this would mean. All these conversations had to be carefully thought out and set in stone. This was almost 40 years ago. The fact that we're still having this conversation is patently absurd.
“In the early 2010s, it was always a very glib phrase: 'Oh, rugby union is a rebellious teenager who hasn't yet I gathered my strength.» '. Then, 21 years on from 1995, [professional] rugby was in his final years of college, trying to find himself.
“If you want to use that analogy, the game is now approaching 30. It's getting married, give birth to children and do responsible things. And it still doesn’t consider it important to have a platform to sit on. It's not enough.»
Talking to people across the country about player payments, you can't help but be humbled by the passion for rugby union and the dedication that the community game is built on. However, the inherent problems of semi-professionalism remain problematic. It's hard to blame players for receiving compensation, but payments at the bottom of the rugby pyramid need to be scrutinized as closely as possible.
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