Irish prudence poses RFU more questions

RUGBY Union is fourth in the pecking order of popular team sports in Ireland, behind Gaelic football, hurling, and soccer – and yet it punches well above its weight, both on the playing field and in its administrative boardrooms.

- NICK CAIN

This is thrown into sharp relief by the size of the Irish Rugby Football Union’s financial reserves before the start of the coronavirus pandemic, compared to its counterparts in the Four Home Unions.

The Irish governing body was in a league of its own, recording total reserves of almost £102m in 2019. The Welsh Rugby Union was the only other national body to record positive figures last year, with a £25.3m reserve, whereas both England and Scotland held a negative position.

The Scottish Rugby Union has maintained a consistent reserve deficit since 2011, which had reduced to minus £4.4m in 2019 – and could have been reduced by at least another half a million if it had slashed the vastly inflated £900,000 salary paid to its chief executive, Mark Dodson.

This brings us to the RFU, and the negative reserves of minus £24.4m in 2019, which were highlighted in this column earlier this month. This focused on the £91m sinkhole in the RFU’s reserves from a positive position of almost £62m in 2011, with a projection that it would have reached at least £67m eight years later if established fiscal guidelines had been applied.

Instead, the RFU’s recent stewardship of English rugby’s financial affairs appear glaringly inadequate by comparison with not just the Irish and Welsh unions, but also the Scots.