England great Courtney Lawes says the Rugby Football Union need to step in to stem the Premiership player drain to France and other countries.
Meanwhile, Northampton Saints director of rugby Phil Dowson has described the “real headache” over whether the new so-called “hybrid” contracts will be sorted out soon enough to deal with the same problem.
A new Professional Game Partnership to govern the next eight years of policy between the Premiership clubs and England, starting from 2024, is thought to be close to sign-off.
Within that is understood to be a new “hybrid” way of paying players to turn out for club and country.
No details have yet been published, but it is expected to lead to around 25 leading players being paid from a central pot, as opposed to an annual salary at their club alongside appearance money for England.
The 34-year-old Lawes, who retired from England duty after the recent World Cup and is in the final year of his club contract at Northampton, admits he has not seen the fine print either.
But he was speaking with four of England’s World Cup squad – Jack Willis, Joe Marchant, Dave Ribbans and Henry Arundell – already playing in France this season, alongside Jack Nowell, Sam and Joe Simmonds, Harry Williams, Dan Robson and Kieran Brookes. Jack Singleton is linked to joining Toulon as a “medical joker”.
Lawes sees no chance of the RFU and Premiership relenting on the rule that bars those players from playing for England, with the exception of Arundell, who has an exemption for this season.
So the maestro flanker wants the RFU to ensure a player can earn the same amount by staying in domestic rugby as he would earn by moving abroad.
“I do think the RFU have to step in if they want their best players to stay in the country, and the central contract thing probably is a good idea,” Lawes said. “You need to pay the best players what they are worth to stay here, otherwise [they will go to] places like Japan or France or wherever it is, who have the money.
“The players’ value is whatever someone is willing to pay for them, so if [clubs in] France will pay x amount for you and nobody in this country will, then it is what it is. You are asking them to get paid such a significant amount less than what they are worth, in order to play for England. It’s not sensible to stay and do that, rather than to go and earn what you are worth.
“For players, it is such a finite career, and it can all end at any minute, so you have to make the money you can while you are playing the game. You can’t just stick around through loyalty or anything like that.”
Lawes concedes it might shift the balance of loyalty away from a club, but some might say this merely highlights the perennial problem of too many matches in the season.
A batch of England players have been meeting head coach Steve Borthwick this week – believed to be to complete the World Cup review, and do a little planning – at the same time as Lawes stated his preference for a top player to appear in “12 to 15” matches for his club a season, on top of around 12 Tests a year for England.
Given a club such as Northampton currently has a schedule of up to 28 Premiership and Champions Cup matches per season – a minimum of 22 guaranteed – there would continue to be weeks when players miss club games.
“Honestly, I think that most players would appreciate that,” Lawes said. “As much as you are loyal to your clubs, having to play almost every game for the club and then going away – when everyone [else at the club] has got time off – to go and play for your country, it’s not great for you.
“Also I think that it puts you on an almost unfair advantage compared to the other nations who do only play the games they need to for their clubs. You’re looking at your big Irish players that have played three or four times for Leinster or Munster or whatever it is, and they’ve come into the tournament raring to go and really fresh and you know that you’ve been through the mill for the last eight, 10 weeks.
“I do think that it would be a good idea for the RFU to get hold of it, not just to keep the players here but also to make sure that you’ve got the best [England] team in the best nick going forward.”
Northampton are facing the possible loss of flanker and captain Lewis Ludlam to Toulon next season.
Contracts for 2024-25 and beyond are being worked out now and Dowson said it would be good to know what is happening about the hybrid deals.
All the Premiership directors of rugby will be meeting in mid-December. Dowson said: “this one is primarily to see where we are up to with the agreements with Premiership Rugby and the RFU.
“Is this uncertainty over the England contracts going to be the reason [a player goes] to France? There is a risk. We’d love to give [Lewis Ludlam] what anyone else can give him, European-wise, but you can’t, because then we might only have 15 players in the whole squad. So you’ve got to balance it up. The market forces mean it’s really tricky. It’s tricky for him as well.
“The sooner that is sorted the better, I think rugby needs direction and we can get on with it. There has to be a way of compensating the players for playing for England, clearly, and there has to be a way of compensating the clubs. How that is managed, whether it is like the cricket central contracts, or whether it is a one-off payment, there has to be the free movement of players because Steve Borthwick, when he came in, couldn’t necessarily pick the team he wanted in the Six Nations last year, and I felt for Steve in that situation.
“It’s a real headache because it’s a moving target the whole time. The salary cap’s going up and down; we’re not entirely certain what that’s going to be in two, three, four years’ time. So you don’t have a long-term view of what that looks like and you don’t have one on what the England landscape looks like.
“What we can’t have is an arms race [where] clubs are going bust. If you drive the salary cap up to compete with France, it becomes very difficult. We’ve got to try to avoid that at all costs.”
Northampton are away to Harlequins on Saturday before meeting Glasgow and Toulon in the Champions Cup.
Lawes said he will not go to France next season because the Top 14 schedule is too arduous, and he will decide his future around February.
“It always depends on the money, doesn’t it?” he said. “It is a huge factor especially when you get to the end of your career. Money talks, man. We will see what happen.”