Treat players well and they will stay here, says RPA's Day

RPA chairman Christian Day believes making English players the best-looked after in the world will help to combat the player drain from the Premiership to France's Top 14 and other more affluent leagues.

- JON NEWCOMBE

The salary cap reduction to £5 million and the loss of three clubs - Worcester, Wasps and London Irish has made the Premiership a less attractive market in comparison to the money on offer across the channel and places like Japan.

Approximately half of the players out of contract at the end of June who have secured a new job have stayed in England either in the Premiership and Championship - with the rest moving on to new challenges in the Top 14, URC, Japan, South Africa, Australia, Italy or the USA.

And the number would have been even lower had it not been for London Irish players inflating the figures. For many of the 71 Exiles players who found themselves out of work there was very little time to secure a move to France as the club went bust a matter of weeks before the Top 14 recruitment dead line, leaving England or other cut-price markets like the MLR in USA as their only viable option.

Day believes that if English rugby can get the terms of the new Professional Game Agreement right, and build protective measures for players into the system, it would help persuade more players to stay here.

"When we benchmark against other playing environments within rugby union and outside rugby union, I can see that we have some work to do to make sure we have a system that is really, really enticing for players to be a part of. That now becomes a crucial piece of work at a time when France and Japan are offering wages that we cannot match in terms of our sustainability," Day told TRP.

"When you look at the New Zealand model for instance, they have experienced this for a long time sort after in Europe and Their best players were New Zealand knew that they needed to keep their best players in the country. As well as being an All Black, their system is incredibly well constructed to make those players stay.