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Premiership clubs ready to splash the cash
By Chris Jones
The good news is that Todd Blackadder had a very good holiday in Italy and Greece. The bad news for New Zealand rugby is that Blackadder is now back at work and looking for “six or seven” new players to ensure Bath become serious English Premiership contenders again.
Blackadder is just one of English rugby’s 12 Premiership directors of rugby on the hunt for new talent to bolster resources, with Ben Franks and his newly promoted London Irish club the first cab off the rank by announcing ten new players, including ex-Blues lock Teofilo Paulo and Italy full-back Luke McLean. Irish can spend up to £7m which is the new English salary cap for next season and that allows the Premiership clubs to a least try to compete with the big spending French outfits who still have the biggest bucks to offer rugby’s top talent.
While Dan Carter banks more than a million Euros a year at Racing, the best deal in England last season was Kurtley Beale’s reported £750,000 ($1.3m NZD) a season with Wasps who waved goodbye to him in May as he headed back home early to Oz. The beaten Premiership finalists are not going to bring in a similarly expensive marquee player as they already have a host of back line talent – much of it English qualified.
The top England players will be receiving close to £400,000( $705,000NZD) a year which is a figure clubs were quoted when Toby Flood was on offer after he decided to leave Toulouse. That is the salary request a leading English club official gave me and the 31-year-old former England outside half eventually signed for former club Newcastle.
So, if that kind of money is available for the top of the range player, what can your average Premiership player hope to receive? Well, two years ago it was estimated the average wage was £100,000 but Bob Casey, the out-going London Irish chief executive, has confirmed a big jump has taken place. He said: “Statistically, wages have gone up and the average is £160,000($282,000NZD) for standard players. You can only imagine what internationals are earning. We are realistic and have not chased guys who we couldn’t afford and our only goal is to stay up next season and then really grow.
“We have looked at better people to come in and join the core of the squad that got us promotion. Nick Kennedy and Brendan Venter have done an incredible job and we started recruiting last July as if we were in the Premiership already.“
So, sun tanned Blackadder has his work cut out before the season starts.
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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