Dan Biggar’s move to Northampton next summer will allow Ospreys and Wales fans plenty of time this season to quantify what they’ll be missing. Seimon Williams says the move has blown apart the dual contract strategy and says it’s time for a fundamental re-think.
So Dan Biggar has announced – in one of the worst-kept secrets in Welsh rugby – that he will leave the Ospreys at the end of this season for Northampton Saints.
It’s perhaps no real surprise. Biggar has been with the Ospreys his whole career. He has been among the finest European fly-halves for the past 3-4 years and performed with credit on the recent Lions tour to New Zealand. He will turn 28 next month and has, probably at most, 4-5 years left as an elite player. The pay – at, allegedly, up to £600,000 per season – is substantial.
With Biggar entering the final year of his existing National Dual Contract (NDC), it seems that the Ospreys and Welsh Rugby Union put together a package for a new NDC which would have seen a significant increase to his existing deal. It also seems that the relationship between Biggar on the one hand and the Union and Ospreys on the other is not as healthy as it might be. The cold, terse joint statement provided by the Union and Ospreys, while wishing him well, struck a sour note in notably – and shamefully – failing to thank him for a decade of service to the Swansea-based club.
For his part, Biggar’s statement should be a source of concern for Ospreys supporters. The comment that it is “…extremely exciting to start a new chapter of my career with a club that shares my ambition to win trophies…”, suggests that he doesn’t see the Ospreys challenging for trophies in the short to medium-term. Ospreys supporters on the Gwl@d Message Board have long been critical of recruitment, of coaching and of the culture at the club. With rumours circulating that Rhys Webb, Dmitri Arhip and Ashely Beck are also considering their options, along with the new/not new/non-extended-until-2020 contract for Head Coach Steve Tandy and on the back of an unconvincing first game of the season last Saturday, their mood isn’t improving.
So the Ospreys may be struggling, which for a Scarlets supporter like me is truly heartbreaking news. Perhaps the wider question is the impact which Biggar’s departure may have on other players, on the strength of the domestic game in Wales, and on the national team.
The latter is straightforward. Biggar will see out this season at the Ospreys and will be available for all training camps and matches. Once he leaves, he will join the four genuine match-23 players already playing in England and who are captured by the “law” – Faletau, Williams, North and Roberts. There are four wildcards. Biggar will get one of them, which means he will be available for all get-togethers and matches within Regulation 9 windows, but will miss the two out-of-window tests and additional camps and will probably have to return to his club during 6 Nations breaks. Longer term, the World Cup season of 2019-20 will see a reduction in wildcards to two, which may, unless the “law” is changed, be an issue.
The former two questions are trickier to tackle.
When a new Rugby Services Agreement (RSA) was signed between the WRU and PRW (on behalf of the professional clubs) in 2014, one of the key planks to the attempt to retain the best players at Welsh clubs was the creation of NDCs. The WRU provided around £2m, with which it would pay 60% of the cost of retaining identified players. Their clubs would pay the remaining 40%. The intention was to retain around a dozen top internationals. Biggar’s new deal at Northampton drives a coach and horses through that. If others are to be offered similar deals, the £2m helps keep five players in Wales. And that’s assuming their clubs have £200,000 spare.
More generally, the RSA is no longer fit for purpose. The income generated by clubs in England and France continues to grow as ever-richer TV deals are signed. Salary caps in those countries have been moved or removed. The WRU now pays comparatively less for access to Test players than any other 6 Nations Governing Union.
The result is clear to see. Professional Rugby in Wales is unsustainable as it currently stands, and it is unsustainable because the game is incapable of generating the income it needs and spending the income it has in the right way. Poor long-term sponsorship and television deals – negotiated by the previous WRU regime – have hamstrung the ability of Gareth Davies and Martyn Phillips to radically improve income. Television deals have, to all intents and purposes, been given away for a relative song. That said, the income generation of the WRU matches that of the IRFU, yet the IRFU invests much more in the professional game than its counterpart.
So how do we make the game sustainable?
Changing names, or making teams more “inclusive”, won’t cut the mustard. Here are a few ideas:
- the ostensibly amateur game is draining resources by needlessly spending money, largely on players. The governance of the professional game should be split from its amateur counterpart, and payments to players should be prohibited at all levels below that of the four professional clubs;
- Pro14 TV deals expire at the end of this season. PRW must be involved as Wales’ lead negotiator in these discussions and any discussions with other sponsors. It is their product which is being sold, not that of the Union. The inclusion of the Southern Kings and Cheetahs is a positive first step in terms of income generation. Mark Davies and team need to be freed to negotiate the best possible deals, even if that means – in the case of television – an exclusively pay-TV deal. With that freedom comes responsibility – PRW must be seen to produce;
- the RSA needs to be torn up and rewritten. NDCs are pointless and frivolous and are not used as they were intended. It shouldn’t be a case of “Team X doesn’t have an NDC so we’ll just hand one out to them to be fair”. Payments should follow players produced by the pro clubs for Team Wales. The greater the number of elite, Test-level pro players produced, the greater the payment;
- the four professional clubs must be allowed to follow their English and Irish counterparts in forming official ‘A’ teams which play regular, meaningful fixtures. The British and Irish Cup has potential as a development tool for young players, but not if we’re sending invitational scratch sides up against Munster A.
- More generally, investment in and payments to the professional clubs must be increased to at least match our 6 Nations competitors
I could go on, but I suspect anybody who’s made it this far is starting to lose the will to live. The WRU and PRW need to come together – in the spirit of partnership which has slowly blossomed in the post-Lewis era. They need to speak with one voice and ensure that they are competing on a level playing field with Irish and Scottish teams.
Players will doubtless continue to leave for personal and financial reasons. That is, to some extent, unavoidable. We must no longer tolerate a system in which a lack of ambition at club level drives players to English and French clubs simply for the chance to win a few meaningful games of rugby. There is no reason why we cannot put a system in place in Wales which allows our four professional clubs to provide every possible challenge a professional rugby player could want. It’s time for the WRU and PRW – and the latter’s constituent clubs – to deliver.