Rugby Union in England – heading for a crisis?
Based upon history and indeed ongoing current evidence, it might be thought by some sports lovers that somehow “it comes with the territory” that – to one degree or another – every field of endeavour, activity or game with serious pretensions to being a truly global sport tends also to be burdened with a series of multi-level governing administrative bodies beset by well-meaning but ultimately counter-productive factional cabals, politics, petty squabbles and manoeuvrings, incompetence, questionable business practices and lack of vision.
Today I must apologise to Rusters for commenting once again upon the world of rugby union and indeed the machinations of the English Rugby Football Union (“RFU”).
Only a fortnight ago, when by chance the 10th December edition of The Rugby Paper crossed my desk, I learned that the RFU – long vilified for its questionable general performance over time by its stout, loyal and hard-working backwoodsmen involved with the amateur/community game around the country was – in R.M.S. Titanic mode – heading straight for a potentially catastrophic financial crisis.
Its former chief executive Francis Baron – a long-term critic of the RFU’s recent course – has accused it of publishing misleading financial information in “explaining away” a reported £6.3 million loss in the financial year 2022/2023, this against its own forecast of a £50.1 million loss in 2023/2024, a figure that Baron himself predicts will reach closer to £59 million and potentially jeopardise the English game to such an extent that its member clubs may be left without a functioning governing body.
I feel no need to comment further on the above.
However.
Today – upon a related but different subject – whilst conducting my habitual daily trawl of the UK’s national papers, I came across this report upon the latest RFU plans for restructuring the top two levels of the English professional game. I leave readers of this organ to decide their own opinion of the proposal …
See here, courtesy of the – DAILY MAIL
