Every single one of the proposals in Sir Bill Beaumont’s letter to clubs on February 28th and the supporting RFU document called “Our Commitment to the Community Game” was covered by the statement that members of the Whole Game Union made in submitting our demand for an SGM on January 9th.
The RFU’s document could have been copied from the Whole Game Union’s “A Better Future For Rugby At All Levels” document sent to all RFU-registered clubs in England on Feb 17th.
The RFU’s “commitment to the community game” was absent without leave before this recent flurry of activity. They had failed to notice the growing dissatisfaction with the Executive, Board and Council that was obvious from press reports for months before January 9th.
Our ‘Better Future’ document summarised months of work and consultation by the WGU which identified from hundreds of clubs the root causes of their dissatisfaction with Twickenham: poor governance; unsustainable finances; bloated administrative structure and neglect of the community game in favour of the elite.
The only elements overlooked by the RFU in their own version of this were the frustration caused by the payment of huge bonuses to their executives and the identification of the RFU Board’s failure to hold those executives to account. The RFU’s actions until last week had focused on defending itself from criticism over its LTIP bonus scheme. The resignation of the Chairman on December 20th was described as a personal decision linked to the “distraction” caused by the LTIP story. The announcement of the Freshfields review was limited to consideration of that bonus scheme.
If you want to know what the RFU really thought, maybe the President of the RFU gave it away last December. Then, in what he thought was a private internal message, he belittled the reporting on growing discontent throughout our game as media spin and clickbait. This showed little “commitment to the community game”. It was only after the SGM letter was reluctantly accepted – having initially been rejected on trivial grounds – that the RFU announced its roadshow. And it was only when the powers that be finally left Twickenham that they seem to have found out just how deep-seated is the resentment at the unfairness meted out to clubs below the elite. What they discovered may have shocked them into action, but it was their attitudes were before they were forced to confront the truth by which they should still be judged now. Because even until the end of last week, the Board and Executive were exhibiting contempt for the Whole Game Union, without whose actions they would still be rooted in TW2, blissfully unaware of the dire state of the game for which they are responsible. Like anyone who tries to express the views of the underprivileged, the WGU is the subject of constant abuse and contempt from Twickenham. Yet only the WGU has accurately represented the collective views of hundreds of clubs and members of the RFU. It is a broad-based group with an advisory board consisting of more than 20 people from clubs at every tier, several Council members and expert former officials of the RFU. It is continually in touch with clubs from all over the country and its support is growing.
The RFU would be well advised to start to take the WGU seriously, to recognise that it is the only way of hearing the collective voice of the English game and to respect its right to a central place in the critical discussions about the future of English rugby.