England great worried ‘model’ PREM club is destined to fail as World Rugby making it almost impossible to succeed
Tommy Freeman celebrating try for Northampton Saints and England great Brian Moore.
Former England star Brian Moore has praised PREM leaders Northampton Saints but has questioned whether their success can be sustainable.
The East Midlands outfit currently reside at the top of the league table following just one defeat in nine, while they have so far gone two from two in the Investec Champions Cup.
There is a home-grown core to the squad, with many of them going on to become key players for Steve Borthwick’s side at Test level.
Northampton’s academy is thriving and the recruitment has been savvy, and Moore believes that they have gone about it the right way.
‘A model for English clubs’
“In many ways, Northampton’s success is a model for how English clubs should be. Most of the support is local but they manage to attract fans who are willing to travel because of what is offered as a match-day experience,” he wrote in his Telegraph column.
“Recent success has been based on developing their own talent. It could be that Saints are benefiting from a generational crop of young talent, but that ignores the fact that they have had to identify, develop and manage that talent from youth and keep it together in the senior professional arena.”
Financial issues have become a theme for England’s top clubs. It wasn’t that long ago that Worcester Warriors, London Irish and Wasps went bust, while most are losing money and relying on rich benefactors to prop them up.
Although the Saints are not quite bucking that trend, they have found a way to become more sustainable in comparison to their rivals.
“You could say that in the light of Saints’ record turnover of around £24m per annum, an increasingly strong balance sheet, and incrementally growing crowds that, financially, Northampton are also a model club,” Moore wrote.
“They have not had a mega-rich benefactor and their path to growth has involved improved commercial operations, with the aim of sustainability. They are not far off breaking even, though for many years they have relied on regular injections of cash from richer shareholders.
“An annual operating loss of about £1m is far better than many of their competitors. There is still a community feel about the Saints that is one of its attractions for some fans, but how realistic is all this?”
Where World Rugby don’t help
However, the issue is sustaining that success and in a society where money rules, it may be inevitable that Northampton suffer a dip sooner rather than later according to Moore.
The Top 14 is where the financial behemoths reside while the reportedly well-backed R360 continues to linger in the background.
It is also not helped, says the England great, by clubs needing a big squad due to the importance of the bench. World Rugby also perhaps needs to take responsibility for the calendar, which is still not aligned.
“Clubs like Northampton face a difficult conundrum. World Rugby continues to operate substitution laws that necessitate that clubs must have larger and more expensive squads,” Moore added.
“The fixture list is haphazard and uneven, mixing domestic league and European competitions, with long breaks for international games.
“How do they make the jump from surviving and sustainable to being wealthy enough to resist the siren calls of other leagues around the world or initiatives like the R360?
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“Can this slower growth match the ambitions of private equity and the already super-rich, whose focus will only be on making substantial returns on their investments?
“The Prem’s franchise proposals are not without risk but, unfortunately, even the status of clubs like the Saints and their exciting brand of rugby cannot obscure the need to face that risk, with all the possible attendant consequences.
“Many Saints fans will not like what is coming, but what genuine alternative is there?”