Saracens CEO Edward Griffiths last week spoke of the club’s desire to scrap the salary cap, calling it a “handbrake” on English rugby and claiming that he had the backing of several other Premiership clubs in doing so.
You suspect that London Welsh were not one of them. The Welsh Exiles have already railed against the ring-fenced nature of the Premiership, which sees the more established clubs receive greater revenues and leaves clubs like Welsh, who straddle the Premiership/Championship divide, struggling to keep up – both financially and consequently in the league.
Never was that more obvious than at the weekend, as they shipped 70 points for the second time this season. The salary cap is not their only hindrance of course – a shocking inability to defend borne of a stupid number of summer signings is right up there also – but it certainly doesn’t help.
Scrap the salary cap, and these inequalities will only become more stark. Yes, the top clubs might not be able to keep up with the spending power of the French clubs at the moment, but a similar problem will arise domestically if the cap is scrapped. Increase the spending power of the more wealthy clubs and the smaller ones get left even further behind.
There will be no more brazen success stories the likes of Exeter this season. The Chiefs are punching way above their weight and have shocked some of the big boys this season, but stick Toulon and Clermont in the Premiership and that’s less likely to happen. The bustling mid-table, that sees third and eighth separated by just 10 points, will be no more.
Harlequins are another side that pride themselves on bringing through English talent rather than recruiting big names. It is an admirable stance and one for which the English national side is eternally grateful – something we’ll come to later.
They are believed to be one of the sides opposed to another salary cap increase, and you can understand why. It takes time to nurture youth and reap the benefits of progressing your team that way. World-famous players in their prime can be signed in an instant with the swish of pen on chequebook. If you want to compete for silverware, only one strategy is viable in a league with no spending limit.
The handful of French clubs who distort the market are, as Brian Moore pointed out in The Telegraph, a huge part of the problem, as no English club can compete with them. But given that the majority of the domestic season is taken up with the Aviva Premiership, keeping that competitive has to take priority over the desire of a select few to have an outside chance of winning in Europe.
The effect on the national side would be keenly-felt – you only have to look at France for proof of that. Sure, they might have had some limited success this autumn but given their loss to Argentina it feels more like luck than anything else. Besides, they’ve been on such a steady decline for the past few years that at the moment it’s nothing more than a flash in the pan. Back it up in the Six Nations, and we can talk.
To nobody’s great surprise, the salary cap was discussed at length up and down the country this weekend. What was more of a shock was the way every single club other than Saracens publicly expressed their support for the cap, given that Griffiths had alleged they had around seven other clubs backing them.
Whilst the likes of Newcastle and Sale – who won’t be hitting anywhere the cap as it is – and London Welsh – who are already bemoaning the financial inequality of the haves and have-nots in the league – were never likely to be amongst the seven, it was intriguing to hear the likes of Bath’s Mike Ford, Gloucester’s Ian Humphreys and Leicester’s Richard Cockerill come out in support of the cap. All three clubs have the financial muscle to attract the best in the world if they were allowed to.
Whether Saracens truly have the backing of other clubs or not, only they know, but they’ve been known to push the boundaries of conventionality in the past, so it wouldn’t surprise too much if it was all just another gimmick.
A final thought – French clubs, despite not having a (realistic) ceiling on their spending, must still sustain their financial viability. Bourgoin and Montauban were both relegated around five years ago for failing to do so. You can sign as many world-class players as you like but if you run too much of a loss on your balance sheets, you face relegation.
Saracens and Bath both currently run healthy losses. A bloated wage bill will only exacerbate that.
It’s tough to see a solution to this dilemma that suits all parties, but next season’s ruling that two rather than one “marquee” (salary cap-exempt) players are allowed, as well as the ceiling rising by £500,000, should be more than enough for now. Any more and there will simply be too great a divide between those with too much money, and those with not enough, to keep the league interesting.
By Jamie Hosie
Follow Jamie on Twitter: @jhosie43
Photo by: Patrick Khachfe / Onside Images
7 replies on “We must not sacrifice a competitive Premiership by scrapping the cap”
I actually think our premiership is probably the best structured league in the world with regards to finance.
We may not have had a team win the European cup for a while, but we have competed well against the big guns and we have had continuous success nationally at under 20 level. The future is bright for England it seems.
“If it aint broke, don’t fix it.”
Really can’t see any long term benefit to increasing the cap. Having the extra “marquee signing” plus the extra budget in the cap is more than enough.
The system works the way it is. To me, this is a non-story and just made up from Sarries to see if it got any legs.
I find the debate around Promotion/Relegation vs Ring-Fencing the league a more interesting one personally if we are going to debate any part of the Premiership Structure.
It’ll be a long time before we can confidently say whether the French model is sustainable. If it turns out it isn’t, it’d be nice not to have followed them without properly debating it.
I think far more focus should be on how to extend professionalism to the 2nd tier. The French league does have more money at the top end, but more importantly they have a fully professional 2nd division, where promoted teams have a genuine chance of thriving at the higher level.
The RFU and AP should be in partnership to increase interest in and the quality of the Championship. The RFU could offer low interest loans to ambitious clubs and the AP could offer their marketing expertise and perhaps a cut of their TV money.
The step-up from Championship to Prem level is far too high and damaging to the overall quality of both. The salary cap is just a red Herring
I don’t think the cap needs to be abolished but as I said before the relegation/promotion issue needs to be sorted out. London Welsh I would describe as awful but that is actually being to polite to them, I feel if Bristol had been promoted it would’ve added to the competitiveness of The Premiership in a way the salary cap also does.
The answer is simple with promotion/relegation to and from The Premiership/Championship/National League 1 you finish bottom you get relegated, you finish top you get promoted and second bottom playoff against second top in two legs for the final place in the top division.
The Championship playoffs do not work and are totally unjust and one up from League One to The Championship is totally unfair, Ealing promoted two seasons ago were relegated last season and now sit top of the league again with Coventry and Rosslyn Park not far behind but a playoff would add extra incentive to their season.
What do they do in Holland?
They ride bikes, make cheese and build windmills 🙂