RFU Council must make a stand for whole game

NOW the Autumn Nation Series is over – with all four games at the Twickenham Allianz Stadium virtual sellouts with crowds close to the maximum 82,000 – the RFU should be in a good financial position.

- JEFF PROBYN

Although, with the self-interest of those taking bonuses added to their already excessive salaries, the RFU are still refusing to return the Championship to a more realistic level of funding, compared to the Premiership.

The Premiership gets £33 million for just 10 clubs under the new Professional Game Partnership (PGP), but the Championship still haven’t had their payments returned to pre-Covid levels as was promised when their funding was cut without warning from £640,000 per club to just around £133,000.

The RFU have had a couple of substantial windfalls with the investment from CVC, although they will be taking a share of any profits made by the RFU plus the re-branding of Twickenham to the Allianz Stadium. This money should have been used to help refund the whole game after the losses created by Covid, but appears to have just been used to fund the deal with the Premiership and the bonuses of the RFU senior executive officers.

The RFU Council were once the sole body that took the decisions as to which direction the game would go and where funding would be spent with the CEO taking instruction from them. Now it seems that there are a number of other boards and bodies that are controlling different aspects of the game.