Why do you support a rugby team? Most people start following the rugby club most local to them – that’s just common sense. You gradually grow attached to your club as a part of the local identity you feel; the rituals and routines of visiting your ground on a matchday, bumping into the players around town – it’s all part of growing to love a club.
Debate on this site recently has been raging as to the direction in which the professional game is heading. In a (perhaps slightly hyperbolic) nutshell, several people seem to be suggesting that money is tearing out its soul. The question essentially being asked, is: would you be upset if a billionaire owner turned your local club upside down, but achieved unparalleled success in doing so?
Players are becoming commodities, rather than local lads who are fanatic about their club and just lucky that they are talented enough to wear the shirt they love for a living. There are still plenty of home-grown players at most clubs, but more and more the game is shifting towards those with the wherewithal to buy the very best, having the best chance of winning the trophies.
Do fans of Toulon – the club that embodies this outlook – care that their team is made up of superstars from all over the world who are looking for a decent paycheck and an easy way of life? As long as they continue to perform on the pitch and win them trophies, I suspect not.
But then, the sacrifice for this is that you get very few true ‘club’ men. Jonny Wilkinson was welcomed into the hearts of the locals, but in the future for every Wilkinson, there will be several James O’Connors. (A side note: this is not an attack on these players – their careers are short so they are absolutely right to maximise their earning potential while they can).
And if most fans asked themselves if they’d rather have a squad full of galacticos winning trophies every season, or a squad full of home-grown talent that never won anything, the majority would plump for the former. It’s why Bath fans aren’t moaning about the investment of Bruce Craig after it catapulted them away from years of mid-table mediocrity, and it’s why the French sides with the deepest pockets look the most likely to win the new European Rugby Champions Cup.
The flipside, of course, is that it is also why the French national side has slipped into such a shoddy state. Where is the incentive to bring through young players with a genuine connection to their club when you can just keep buying better elsewhere? The parallels with the English football team and the Premier League are depressingly obvious.
Professionalism hasn’t all been bad, of course – far from it. The quality of some of the rugby played today is astounding, and the fact that it is so readily available to view (if you’ve got the right subscriptions, mind) are but a couple of positives.
That said, Wasps’ move to Coventry recently is proof enough that there is little room for sentiment in the game anymore. It may have been a move vital to the financial future of the club, but throwing the fans under the bus in the process was a chilling example of where they sit in the modern rugby club owner’s list of priorities.
On a lighter note, an entertaining tale from New Zealand’s trip to America. The All Blacks are used to being the biggest attraction in town, so it is somewhat amusing to hear that their arrival in the USA, the most lucrative sports market in the world, has been met with a giant ‘meh’.
The players, of course, will take it in their stride, and may even relish the diminished spotlight on them, but the New Zealand media certainly don’t seem happy about it – articles abound already moaning that nobody even turned up to see them arrive at the airport, and there was a less-than-impressive local media contingent at their first press conference.
I doubt if the rest of the rugby world will be shedding too many tears.
With all this doom and gloom surrounding professionalism and its downsides, it’s a great time for the Barbarians to be in town. Following their twitter account gives an insight into their mentality – and it is decidedly amateur. Most of the training done in the bar during the week, turn up on Saturday and fling the ball around to all parts of the pitch – much more what your average fan can relate to.
By Jamie Hosie
Follow Jamie on Twitter: @jhosie43
Photo by: Patrick Khachfe / Onside Images
6 replies on “What price professionalism for the local rugby fan?”
Finger on the pulse in many ways Jamie!
“why the French national side has slipped into such a shoddy state” – No longer will International Rugby be the pinnacle.
The future – A la the fast show –
Leinster millionaires 42 – Toulon Billionares 41
Saracens Billionares 109 – Newport Gwent Dragons Whip rounds 3
Apologies about that NGD – couldn’t resist it – have a friend from Newport. iIlustration purposes only!
DDD
Good article James. Although there are are hundreds of thousands of fans who support the “big” teams in the European Cups/Super Rugby, Top 14, Aviva, Currie/ITM Cups as well as international teams, there are still as many who ,week in/week out support their local club and this will never change. Long may it continue!!!!
Billy, I worry that the latter will change though when there is no domestic or decent international scene in those areas/countries that have been priced out of rugby. If Wales are (no sniggering please…) totally rubbish at rugby, no decent pro teams, no presence at national level, then interest among the next generation will wane, clubs will find it harder to attract them in as they’re all off watching and playing moneyball instead.
Rugby exists in a precarious balance – as I said on one of the other articles. Football has had a century of pro and a good few decades to get used to this. Fans expectations are at the level that align with it. “Brands” have been developed that have significant value off the pitch so money is not only attracted by the size and loyalty of local crowds. Rugby is still, in the national and global conscious, a nice game but it seems to think it can bust out of this niche by emulating all of the surface of football while still maintaining what makes rugby different. I’m not so sure it can.
Football also has other differences – the national game is not and never really was the pinnacle, football clubs (in my experience) are much more about just the game than the community so winning matches is almost the entire reason they exist. Rugby is, in my experience, not so focussed.
Rugby is massive in countries with relatively small domestic populations – we don’t have the sizes of Eng/Germany/Spain in all but 2 countries – Eng and Fra. So if rugby skews towards the money they we’ll cut down the size of it in a much more drastic way than football.
Rugby requires more effort to get into. Football is still *the* pickup and play game. Rugby needs more extensive grass roots nurturing to get and keep players in it. This costs money and won’t see a direct ROI.
As for Jamie’s question … would I be delighted if a billionaire came into The Blues and bought us the All Blacks? Honestly – a fleeting joy no doubt but then that would be replaced by the knowledge that this is only sustainable while the billionaire remains interested. Instead of the excitement of seeing who we unearth, what we’re building towards, it would be replaced by the dread of waiting for the money to get bored and wander off or for an even richer billionaire to sign our squad. Cardiff City live under the same shadow and I couldn’t enjoy that.
At the risk of being shot down, I’m going to make a counterpoint to these arguments.
We live in a much more transient society. I am an example of this as a Devon boy who ended up as a Glos supporter, after living in the city while working there. I’m now back down in Devon and 20 minutes up the road from Sandy Park and end up going there more than Kingsholm. I still love my rugby and regard myself as a “proper” supporter, but the days of home grown players at local clubs has been and gone as people move about the country and the world much more freely now.
Now whether this is a good thing or not is a wider social argument, but we can no more stem this tide than Canute could.
“Pew” “Pew” – shots fired!
Staggy – Wouldn’t compare your emigration from Devon to Glos. and Giteau’s from Sydney to Toulon!
A transient society I’m all for – Mercenaries I’m not. These guys aren’t moving to a new country – looking for a club and then settling in – they are being parachuted in to places they have never heard of. As OW wrote “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” – I value rugby – but am afraid it will pay a big price for what is going on at the moment. Money doesn’t buy heart.
DDD
DDD. I would compare my wanderings to Giteau! We both moved to where we could best work to earn the most money. Doesn’t mean that I give any less in my job and I could point to a number of so called mercenaries who give everything on the pitch, while the local lads don’t. It is a mindset and some have it and some don’t. In fact what you will find is that the standards of the club set the standards on the pitch. Just ask Exeter, which is a team made up of local lads and “mercenaries”. Therefore I can’t agree with your argument on this one. Now ducking for cover again!