'High profile, high achiever' long shortlist has delighted the RFU

RFU boss Bill Sweeney has claimed that the newly announced professional game partnership (PGP) will have a high profile person named as the independent chair of the professional rugby board (PRB) tasked with its smooth running. The PRB will have an independent chair and two further independent members on the board that will oversee the eight-year partnership that was signed off on Wednesday following 18 months of negotiations.

The RFU and Premiership Rugby will each have three voting members on the board, including the RFU’s newly appointed board member Wayne Barnes, while players union RPA will have two seats (one voting and one observer) to ensure that players are central to decision making for the professional game.

No independent members have yet been appointed to the board but Sweeney was enthused by the midweek call that was had with the recruitment agency heading up the job search to find the right person, claiming there as “no lack of interest” in candidates to become the independent chair.

“On the governance side previously we had the professional game board which served a purpose, but it really lacked teeth,” said Sweeney, reflecting the governance of the previous eight-year deal that existed between the RFU and Premiership Rugby. “It didn’t really have the independence and the autonomy to make some of the bigger calls.

"So going forward now, the men’s professional rugby board, which is the new governing body for the professional game in England, will have three board representatives from PRL. It will also have one representative from RPA and it will also have Judith (Batchelar), who is the chair of RPA, as a regular observer with unrestricted access to any of the meetings, and you have three more members of that board who will come from the RFU.

“It will be chaired by an independent chair, and there will be two independent non-executive directors. One ideally we want with a very strong, sporting credible background and the other one will probably be more of a governance type profile focused very much on how do you manage to deal with a group of stakeholders who have some conflicting needs on occasion – how do you manage your way through that process.

“We had the first call Wednesday morning with the executive search agency on the long shortlist… we just found it really difficult to get it down to the numbers we have got on their currently.

“You’d all be surprised if you saw some of the names that are on that shortlist. They are really high profile, high achiever, well-known names in the city and in business and there has been no lack of interest in coming forward to be the independent chair for that professional rugby board.”

Sweeney added that while teething problems are expected with the implementation of the professional game partnership, he suggested that strong relationships between the various partners will ensure its work will get done.

“What we want happen here is that now that the PGB is signed, we don’t have to see it again. It’s put in a file somewhere, we never have to take it out, we don’t have to use it for disputes or conditions, whatever, but we will have a system in place which is also dependant on how the relationships work.

“Relationships always matter. They matter in business, they probably matter even more in sport, so this is all about settling it down, getting that working relationship going, have it independently chaired, two strong independent non-executive directors that are empowered to make decisions that are in the best interest for clubs and also country.

“There will obviously be teething problems, there always are and I can guarantee you from conversations we have with other unions, whichever system structure you look at, it doesn’t matter which country, it may appear all rosy on the outside but they have issues to deal with.

“They have problems to deal with and they have their own unique ways of managing that, and that is the purpose of what we are doing here.”