Contract season is very much in session. This time last year, the professional game in this country was shrouded in uncertainty. All contract talk was put off until January of 2021 for all players – mid-way through the season, which is about as far from ideal as you can get – and, while elements of that uncertainty are still in place, it’s a different world from the financial constraints of late 2020. Three big November gates at the Aviva – one of them a sellout – combined with the home provincial gates of the early season and (hopefully) to come, have given the IRFU some breathing room but it would be a mistake to assume that all is rosy in the garden from a financial perspective.
The IRFU has moved quickly on their Must Sign Can’t Lose guys. Some of that business is announced, some of it isn’t. One of the announced deals belongs to Tadhg Furlong, who started the season on a one-year extension. He signed a three-year central contract deal at the peak of his career and importance to Ireland that, we can assume, puts him on the kind of contract tier previously occupied by guys like Conor Murray and Johnny Sexton. That’s how important Tadhg Furlong is and it’s not hard to see why. Tightheads are usually amongst the highest-paid forwards in any team, primary ball carriers are always near the top of the chart too and Tadhg Furlong is the best tighthead in the world and a primary ball carrier on top of that.
The man is getting paid. And rightly so.
But that was a relatively straightforward deal. Furlong is one of the best players in the world, he’s playing incredibly well and with the IRFU pulling in some good gates and other deals, it was something of a no-brainer on the IRFU’s side. Furlong gets three years of security on some excellent money to play for his home province too so everyone’s happy!
If only all the contract decisions were so simple.
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The change in scheduling from the old PRO12/14 to the United Rugby Championship is something of a game-changer when it comes to contracting and squad management. In the PRO14 during most regular, non-COVID disrupted seasons or World Cup years from early last decade on, you were guaranteed to have 8/9 games that would fall in and around the test windows of November and the Six Nations in the Spring. You’ll remember those games, no doubt. For the Irish provinces, we usually got to see a mixture of squad veterans, senior guys close to veteran status that are outside the test bubble, non-Irish qualified players, test players released from camp for game time when they haven’t made a matchday squad, down the chart senior players and youth prospects.
We would usually be playing heavily rotated squads who had to cut way deeper into their depth charts, and those charts just straight up were not as good as Munster, Ulster and Leinster’s depth charts or Connacht, who would usually have more of their first string guys available in those windows anyway.
The Irish provinces usually won the vast majority of these games because, for the most part, quality told. The Irish provinces would be going into our depth charts the same as, say, Scarlets, Glasgow, Cardiff and Benetton were, but the quality in the depth chart of, say, Leinster just didn’t compare.
In November of 2020, for example, Leinster stuck 50 points on Edinburgh. This is the squad that Leinster were able to name and keep in mind that this is with a large representation of test players away with Ireland.
15. Jimmy O’Brien (22) Ξ
14. Cian Kelleher (17) **
13. Liam Turner (2) Ξ
12. Ciarán Frawley (28) ε
11. Dave Kearney (152) ∇
10. Harry Byrne (14) ε
9. Luke McGrath (132) ∇
1. Peter Dooley (79) Ψ
2. James Tracy (114) ∇
3. Michael Bent (145) ∇
4. Devin Toner (252) ∇
5. Scott Fardy (65) ∇
6. Dan Leavy (66) ∇
7. Scott Penny (17) ε
8. Rhys Ruddock (178) ∇
16. Dan Sheehan (3) ε
17. Michael Milne (12) Ξ
18. Ciarán Parker (2) **
19. Ross Molony (100) Ψ
20. Josh Murphy (36) Ψ
21. Hugh O’Sullivan (23) Ξ
22. David Hawkshaw (2) Ξ
23. Ryan Baird (12) ◊ε
∇ Former International
◊ In the wider test bubble at the time (as of November 2020)
Ψ Experienced club player
ε High potential young player
Ξ Down chart squad player or youth prospect
** No longer at Leinster
This is almost the perfect balance between young players making their way in the pro game – the guys under 20 caps – mixed with established club stalwarts and former internationals. Harry Byrne is paired with Luke McGrath. Scott Penny is in an all international back five with highly experienced, high-quality operators like Scott Fardy, Rhys Ruddock and Dan Leavy playing in the same unit.
A lot of Leinster’s inexperience in that selection was loaded towards the outside backs but even then, you have a quality operator like Dave Kearney there to balance it out. Leo Cullen understood that the best way to win games like this was to load your experience in the pack, overwhelm the opposition there and then let a forward platform do what a forward platform usually does in this game.
We’ve all seen teamsheets like this and marvelled at Leinster’s depth but what we don’t see is how expensive teams like this are to field.
It works for Leinster because they, essentially, have two teams.
It’s easier to describe it as Leinster Ireland and Leinster Provincial. Leinster, because of their mass representation at test level, have way more central contract tier players than the other provinces. At the time of writing, that supposedly includes Robbie Henshaw, Jonathan Sexton, Garry Ringrose, Tadhg Furlong, Cian Healy and James Ryan with Andrew Porter (likely to replace Healy’s central deal), Caelan Doris, Ronan Kelleher and, perhaps, Jack Conan and Josh Van Der Flier soon to be added to that list.
These players are made available to Leinster by the IRFU but do not impact Leinster’s provincial budget. There are some exceptions where players get blended deals with the province, IRFU or private finance combining to get a deal done but, for the most part, a central contract gives you access to the player without a provincial financial contribution albeit with IRFU imposed limits on game time, demands on game time and, naturally, unavailability during test windows. So you have all the benefits of a top tier international player without the financial commitment. When you combine all of the players on this list, the actual financial benefit is pretty stark. If you were to pay for Henshaw, Ringrose and Sexton purely out of your provincial budget, for example, there wouldn’t be that much left over to contract, let alone contracting Tadhg Furlong, Cian Healy and James Ryan in the same front five. That would be incredibly expensive and have a knock-on effect on who you can contract down the depth chart in the pack and in the wider squad itself.
Leinster use the breathing space that this central contract “buffer” provides to contract an incredibly deep senior squad.
Their central contract tier players, in essence, allow Leinster to retain an incredibly deep roster of players who could easily start for clubs elsewhere. But all these guys need to be paid commensurate with their experience. Established senior players are on a certain tier of contract and guys who are former internationals have that premium added to their contract too but, when you have access to some of the best players in Europe without using your provincial budget you can afford to contract that bigger, more experienced second layer.
A lot of the complaints you hear from Wales, in particular, about how much Leinster spend on their squad is a misunderstanding of how it is funded. Leinster/Munster/Ulster have broadly the same amount of IRFU funding, for the most part, but the big difference is the space that central funding gives them.
These players love playing for Leinster – it’s a great rugby environment – but they’ll be getting paid commensurate to their value too. Internationals like Rhys Ruddock, Devin Toner (who was on a central contract until the end of the season before last), Dan Leavy, Will Connors, Luke McGrath will be paid more than other players without the level of achievement. Leinster have the space to spend that money and they’ve done a great job of retaining guys like that in years gone by. Money, however, isn’t everything. You also need to actually play.
Having the funds to afford an experienced second layer is one thing, having minutes to give guys – meaningful minutes – is another.
In a regular, non-COVID season, a PRO14 side might expect to have eight or nine games taking place during test windows with other games around the window liable to be affected by rest mandates for test players. That isn’t the case for all of the teams in the old PRO14 but it was certainly the case for teams under the IRFU umbrella. Those test window games were worth 45 points so there was a valuable role and meaningful in-squad logic for players whose main job was to play in these games.
For Leinster, it wasn’t as simple as having one team for playing knock out games, Champions Cup and targeted interpros and another for regular season rugby, but there was a level of segmentation to their sides for each “layer” of competition that made it easier to keep guys involved.
Certain key guys were as likely to make an appearance against Zebre in November – Ruddock, Kearney, Molony, Toner, McGrath, Ross Byrne, Scott Fardy – as they were to be part of a matchday squad for a Champions Cup semi-final, but Leinster excelled at having a team to “win” the regular season and then a largely different team to win the trophies. But it doesn’t matter. Leinster had the funds to contract guys capable of starting and winning a large bulk of the regular season games to earn a home semi-final, they had minutes to go around to keep those guys happy even if others would be coming in to play the big playoff games.
The likes of Connors, Ruddock, Leavy and others down the chart like Penny, Deegan, Frawley etc have been repeatedly offered moves elsewhere in Ireland on the same money (or higher) but have turned those moves down. Why wouldn’t they? In the last few seasons, they got to play a tonne of pretty meaningful rugby, be part of a winning environment playing for their home province and, to be fair, they didn’t find their path to Ireland consideration blocked. Will Connors is a great example of this – he got into the Ireland squad mostly off the back of PRO14 performances and, even including his recent long term injury, Connors has 9 caps for Ireland and only one Champions Cup appearance for Leinster.
I’m speaking about Leinster here primarily because they are the benchmark for strength in depth in the URC and, when you really think about it, the entirety of world rugby outside test level. That sounds like hype, but I don’t think it is. Look at the test players – past and present – that they have in their pack alone? We’re not just talking about a bunch of one-cappers like you see in France. These are players who have played for Ireland at least 5/6 times in the recent past. Nobody has that kind of depth. To keep that many players engaged, happy, paid and pointing all in the same direction is a massive achievement. Leinster very rarely lose guys they really want to keep and that has played a large part in their success.
But that is about to become a lot more difficult, I feel.
The United Rugby Championship’s decision to cut out test window rugby from the schedule has changed up the equation from a contracting perspective for the Irish provinces.
When you combine that with the new shark tank of the Irish Shield, the opportunities for game time during the November and Six Nations windows have evaporated, so the contractual demand for players to be available and prominent during those windows has decreased exponentially.
This November was the first time in a number of seasons that there was a clear block of no provincial games mid-season. Last season, there would have been a full slate of games with down-chart players getting a tonne of minutes and week to week prominence before the return of the test guys for the European Cup post-November series. Instead, every non-test player spent four weeks either training, going on holiday, playing one A game or lining out in the AIL for their club.
At the end of the block, the squeeze for minutes came on. At Leinster and Munster, the demand for early season results was such that those down chart opportunities for players were hard enough to come by. The difference between playing a Bulls side minus one international and a heavily rotated Cardiff side is night and day and the difference between playing in a soft Conference and the Irish Shield is night and day on Venus.
Losses are more costly, the opposition is generally stronger, so opportunities for experimentation and development are harder to come by. In the upcoming December interpros, it’ll be very difficult for any head coach to risk going deep into his squad because any loss to an in-conference rival is now a critical loss. In previous years, Munster could afford to lose to Leinster and Ulster – from a table strategy perspective if not an optics perception – because the most important game in our conference over the last two seasons was against Edinburgh, Scarlets and Connacht during the regular season. A loss to Leinster hurt, sure, but it wasn’t critical to our playoff chances. This year, any loss to any other Irish province is a damaging loss to chances of playoff progression and even qualification for the European Cup. When pressure comes on, coaches will look to their proven game-winners, if they are fit.
The next time it’ll be “safe” for coaches to rotate their squad will likely be post-Six Nations when it’ll be clearer what needs to be done in the Irish Shield and the overall log in general.
So what does that mean for your depth players? It means less game time, straight out the gate, and limited opportunities for week to week game time. It means more holding tackle bags and playing opposition in training. It means more “competition for places” on the streets but, in reality, “waiting for an injury” in the sheets.
From a squad management perspective, does it make more sense now to “thin out” your second layer of experience to create more opportunities for your young talent?
From a contracting perspective, I think the new URC schedule has put more pressure on the level of depth you can actually afford to carry. If every game is incrementally more important, and the real value is in developing central contract tier players, any player who is north of 26 that isn’t in the Irish bubble and on a high enough contract tier without being a cast-iron inclusion on a Champions Cup matchday squad has become a difficult guy to retain on the same terms they are currently playing on. If you can convince them to take a contract cut, great, but it’ll be very difficult to convince them when you’re also offering them less rugby on average. That’s something you can live with at 22/23, but something of a problem when you’re 25 and up. That’s before we’ve even gotten into the prospect of the IRFU looking to cut contract costs across the provinces while they recover post-pandemic if there is a post-pandemic in the near future.
In that environment, does it make sense to make your young prospects the main bulk of your second layer, let your senior pros outside the test bubble expire and compete for down chart Irish qualified guys who have the capacity to ignite their test careers elsewhere? For me, yes. What value is there in paying higher tier contract money for what are, essentially, backup players to central contract guys when the main reason you need them – to play when they are with Ireland – is gone? Sure, the central contract or regular test guys won’t play every game they’re technically fit and able for but if you’ve got young players who need minutes too, something’s got to give, especially if results suffer.
At Leinster, guys like Max Deegan and Will Connors could find themselves in a tough spot with their renewal this year. I’m sure Leinster will want to retain them but where do they see them in the depth chart? What does that mean for both players’ minutes going forward and the opportunities that come with it? If there are no injuries to guys like Doris or Van Der Flier, how many big playoff games will these guys see meaningful action in?
If your Ulster, Munster and Connacht, do you make a play for these guys? I think you’d have to consider it.
The same is true for any midfielder at Leinster behind one (and maybe two) centrally contracted players. Realistically speaking, how many opportunities are you going to get outside of a long term injury to either Ringrose or Henshaw? Ringrose is 26. Henshaw is 28. These guys could partner with each other for another five or six seasons at a very high level so how long would you be willing to bide your time? Especially when the handy shop window games during test windows where you could pick up two, three or more games on the spin are a thing of the past?
And if you’re Leinster, how much sense does it make to go big to get Joey Carbery back to Leinster as a potential central contract centrepiece in the post-Sexton era? I think it makes more sense than ever, especially when Ross Byrne firmly falls into the high contract value, 25+, not in test bubble, will always bench behind Sexton as long as he’s fit equation and Harry Byrne is still very much a work in progress.
For the players themselves, the equations have changed. You used to be able to guarantee very good money to play at home BUT also have a fair block of meaningful game time throughout the season. I’m sure the coaches will promise most players an expanded role but if you’re sitting down the chart at any of the provinces while north of 25 years of age, you’ve got to wonder about your actual prospects of meaningful non-tackle bag rugby.
