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Tom Hamilton, Senior Writer
RFU CEO Bill Sweeney says he’s the right man to take the organisation forward and insists English rugby is “on the cusp of something quite spectacular”.
Sweeney spoke to the media on Wednesday following a turbulent year where four professional clubs have gone bust.
It’s been a tough 12 months for English rugby. At the start of the year the RFU apologised after an announcement over lowering the tackle height in the community game was met with a widespread backlash. There was also an internal revolt in the RFU council over the executive leadership on the eve of the Argentina match, but Sweeney saw off this challenge calling it a “pretty cynical” move from those “no longer in the game” and with “agendas”.
Despite all this, Sweeney was resolute on Wednesday when he spoke directly to the media for the first time in just over nine months. “I personally feel I am [the right person to lead the RFU]. There’s probably a large number of my friends and family who would be quite happy if I didn’t do it any longer,” Sweeney said.
“I can understand the frustration. If you look at all the things that have happened over the last 12 months with clubs going into liquidation, the tackle height situation and reports about our financial state, I get all that. We have got to go out there and talk to people directly in many cases, but also through you [the media] in terms of the real state of the game. I do believe that we are on the cusp of something quite spectacular here.”
Sweeney said the RFU and Premiership Rugby are on the verge of agreeing a new hybrid contract model for 25 of the men’s team where England coaches would have input on their skill development and fitness plans. It’s all part of a new Professional Game Partnership (PGP) between the English rugby stakeholders ahead of the 2024-25 season.
“This is a unique moment, an opportunity in time to fix the things that have stopped us winning Six Nations championships on a regular basis,” Sweeney said. “To have more consistently performing England teams, we need to fix a number of issues that have been broken for some time. We have won four Six Nations and one World Cup in 20 years. That is not what you would expect from us as an organisation.
“Throughout that period we have had successive management teams in place and the critical fundamental issues have not been addressed.
“The opportunity around the professional game partnership is to bring the elite game together to make sure we can thrive and to make sure we have consistently competitive teams and we don’t have boom-and-bust periods when it is more based on hope.
“There has been an absence of a joined-up professional game strategy and we have now developed one. We want a single-entity approach.”
And regarding Championship side Jersey Reds, who ceased trading last month, Sweeney said: “We had not had one single warning about the plight from Jersey,” Sweeney said. “What Covid did is expose any weaknesses or flaws in any business model. Any area where organisations were under stress, Covid really exposed that. That’s what we saw with London Irish, specific reasons around Wasps and specific reasons around Worcester.
“At the RFU, we don’t have financial oversight over what are independently-run organisations. Frankly, it’s not our role to prop up financially-failing businesses.”