[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]C[/su_dropcap]OVID 19 has changed the world in some ways that are obvious and in ways that we haven’t even imagined. It struck me today as I was walking along a road in the middle of nowhere near my house. At a certain point, I became aware that I was probably nearing the 2km radius mandated by the health guidelines so, for the craic, I whipped out my phone and checked 2kmfromhome.com. That site showed me that, sure enough, around 100m up the road ahead of me was an invisible barrier that was outside the 2km radius allowed. If I followed the road as I had planned to complete my “loop” back to the house, I’d be breaking the 2km guideline.
I turned around and walked back the way I’d come. Why? No one would have known if I’d gone outside the radius for the 10 minutes max it would have taken to get back on my loop but I didn’t. All it takes is enough people cutting a small corner here and there to suit themselves before the whole thing comes crashing down. When you see people having a house party in your estate, they didn’t just decide to jump to that stage. It came with small breaks along the way. Maybe they thought because they met a friend in a park outside the radius and they didn’t die that it was OK. Maybe they visited their elderly parents on the sly and nothing bad happened in the week since.
If I walked past that invisible line, who could it hurt? Everyone. Because it would be a break of the individual discipline we all need to beat this virus. Walking 101m up a road might not directly condemn someone to die alone with tubes down their throat as they look at medical staff they don’t know through a window but the concept of breaking guidelines because it would be convenient for me keeps the virus alive on our island for longer.
If enough people make those small, selfish decisions, we collectively edge closer to overwhelmed hospitals, mass graves and a world that would be so bad, we’d dream of going back to what we have today.
When I think about what professional rugby will look like after the grand re-ordering of what we took for granted at Christmas, it really does pale into comparison to the battle we’re currently fighting. Rugby doesn’t matter in the current battle but, if we’re to get through this pandemic, we have to fight every day to get back to the normality that we love. For me, a big piece of that normality is professional rugby. So every time I wash my hands even though they are red and sore, every time I disinfect my shopping for 20 minutes, every time I cross the road to avoid someone, every time I get lonely, every time I miss the world before, I look at it as a necessary pain that I have to endure to get my normality back sooner.
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When rugby eventually does come back, it will have to change. Maybe it’s taken a seismic shock like COVID19 to make us look at what we have and decide that we can’t go on as we have been.
I look at the financial carnage going on all through the game – but in England specifically – and wonder how it got to this. You have multiple private clubs losing millions every year to keep up with the expense of competing at the top end of this game and, as a result, everyone else’s wage bill has had to go up to match it.
It starts like this; let’s say that New Money RFC decides that they want to be a successful rugby team but they want to accelerate the process. The chairman of New Money RFC has deep pockets and very little patience so he wants success now, rather than later. The easiest way to get that success is to recruit top players over the course of a few seasons and the easiest way to do that is by wildly inflating the wages you offer to these top players. Who wouldn’t take a 33% increase on your yearly wage?
The second that New Money RFC start to win trophies, their rivals will be faced with a decision – do we want to be successful or are we happy losing to these guys every year? If you pick the first option, the other teams will immediately have to inflate their wages to match what New Money RFC are offering. Some clubs will go into debt to match their ambitions but New Money RFC knew this too. Part of their calculations in spending this money was that opposition clubs would have to overextend their finances to compete with this wage inflation and that some wouldn’t be able to hack it for very long.
This doesn’t just hurt the teams in New Money RFC’s league either because they can sign players from other rugby “economies”. The teams in those other rugby economies have to make a decision to accept their first and second layers of talent being picked off by the wage explosion elsewhere and take the lack of on-field success that comes with it, or match the wages as best as they can.
It doesn’t just raise the ceiling for the best players either, it means everyone will have to be paid more down the line. This pressure builds year on year on year until players are being paid more than they ever have before and most of the professional clubs and unions are seeing their turnover go out in player wages. You can step off the carousel at any time but, when you do, you accept that you and your club are no longer going to be successful at the top end of the game and all the knock-on effects that come with that change in status.
The whole circus could just about keep going in a world where TV money and ticket prices would always go up but COVID19 is the reckoning that we have all feared, just not in the guise most expected. I thought that the inevitable contraction in TV money to the major wage drivers in the Northern Hemisphere would be the first shock with a drop in the Six Nations TV money proving the second shock to the unions and union-backed teams.
Post COVID19, I don’t think there’s any reality where wages won’t be forced to go down. The game was barely supporting them as is, and it certainly won’t in a world where the Gallagher Premiership are still looking for a broadcast deal after their current one and the complete erosion of pay-TV contracts in a world with no sport creates real pressure between what leagues need to keep going and what pay-TV companies can reasonably afford to spend on a minority sport like rugby.
This wage contraction won’t happen immediately, because contracts are contracts and they overlap for the next year or two but the next big round of contracts to the top players in a year or two will tell an awful lot. That is unfair to players who have benefitted from the inflated market but concessions on the number of games they play in a season could be a workaround. Less money for fewer games and a sport with a lighter physical toll might be acceptable to most players but that won’t really be apparent once the rubber hits the road.
The key to the entire cycle will be the opportunistic clubs who will spot an opportunity to start the entire process off again – to use the deflated market post-COVID to buy success. When I see Montpellier, owned by one of the richest men in the game, being compelled to deny that they’re currently in the market to sign Pieter Steph Du Toit, it’s a nod to this idea that they would be looking to “cook” the market while everyone else is struggling.
A bit like that imaginary line in the road, if the game is to survive in the coming years, it’ll take a concerted, combined effort to make a fairer, more equitable game that still rewards the best but doesn’t make chasing the best like a trip to the casino.
