Loose Pass: English rugby’s plight and French farce

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This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with problems in English rugby on and off the field, tackle technique and France’s predicament…

England’s fault lines increasingly exposed

It’s been quite the month for English rugby. The national team is struggling badly, while an ever-larger number of players is making a compelling case for inclusion/call-up at the cost of a number of established, experienced players, finding those cases dismissed by an increasingly isolated-looking and intransigent coach.

Meanwhile, at club level – where the games, by the way, have been watching better than ever – the league has moved to ring-fence the top level to 13 clubs, including those disgraced champions relegated as a result of their financial indiscretions.

The problem there is that those disgraced champions have just lost their first game (without a bonus point) in what was perceived by nearly all as a walk in the park season to regain promotion, a game not even thought to be against their closest challengers, from a league where RFU funding has just been cut by up to 75 per cent.

But of those top 13 clubs, how many are not actually disgraced? The latest bit of news broken in an English newspaper on Monday suggests that the financial indiscretions might not be limited to just those disgraced champions but all, or nearly all, of the top flight clubs.

England’s tax inspectors are following up an investigation into soccer pertaining to how payments to agents and players are accounted for. The soccer probe resulted in millions of pounds in unpaid taxes being recovered. The rugby probe is remarkably similar in nature, focusing on earnings by players through channels away from their playing contracts. The tax implications are what they are, but if earnings by those players – such as image rights – are deemed to be a part of salary in the tax assessment, it’s going to lead to probable proof of multiple salary cap breaches by multiple teams.

What that could mean is impossible to quantify. It may, or may not, dilute Saracens’ guilt – although clearly Sarries pushed the envelope a little harder than most.

But right now, the look is that the RFU has cut funding to a league in the belief that this league does not have the potential to be competitive with the top teams, yet those top teams may now possibly be proven to have been transgressing against their financial boundaries systematically, while recent results suggest they are really not that far further ahead on the playing field as might have been perceived. It’s not a good look for any part of England’s top level with the exception of the Championship, whose clubs surely now need to be better represented at the elite table.

Pity the players too, who are perfectly within their rights to negotiate what they can in terms of salary, smash themselves to bits every week (we’ve not even mentioned the looming head injury investigation) and are currently, despite the situation, providing regular top-notch entertainment. This weekend past’s games were, by and large, excellent.

English rugby is in reasonable shape on the field, the national team’s travails notwithstanding. Off it, it is looking worse than ever.

Safety measure overlooked?

Shannon Frizzell’s try for the Highlanders on Friday was one of the highlights of the game, but it might have been remembered for a very different reason had Brad Weber not survived Jona Nareki’s thigh thundering into his neck in his attempt at a momentum-halting tackle.

We’re in an age where head injuries are under the spotlight in every game, where contact to the head is under the spotlight every game, where players are being sent off every week for contact to the head that might be involuntary and where players are removed at any moment they might show signs of brain injury. Past players are bringing possible class actions against the game for neglecting the risks of repeated head injury.

The game has responded for the large part, but surely it cannot be beyond the wit of the lawmakers to quickly, in the light of all the above, outlaw a tackle where the tackler clearly puts his head in front of the tackle in order to use it as an obstruction?

Accidents will happen, but Weber’s tackle was an avoidable accident waiting to happen. If the game is serious about clamping down on head injury, it will censure those who put themselves in danger as well as those who do it to others.

How to catch up

It’s barely believable that France’s coach and players have escaped censure for their bubble-bursting indiscretions, but far more problematic than just meting out punishment is answering the question of how to stuff the fixture against Scotland into the current calendar.

It might be March 26, and the clubs concerned, who have to give up their players for yet another weekend, might get a little slice of the financial pie. But this is a situation that will leave nobody truly happy (except, naturally, for the national team players) and further dilute the credibility of competitions – not least if France come a cropper against Wales and the game is rendered a dead rubber.

Draconian it may have been, but for the good of the game’s image, it would have been better to have awarded the game to Scotland.

Loose Pass compiled by Lawrence Nolan

 

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