I was quick to pitch my two cents worth into a Twitter
discussion this week on agents and schoolboy rugby players. My initial
reaction, without really knowing what it was all about, I admit, was that I
have never been so afraid in my life.
I’ve tried since then to find out a bit more about what’s
going on, and although I still don’t think I’ve got the full picture, I’m still
horrified to hear what’s going on, and that there are people debating how best to
use talented 18 year-old rugby players as a source of income, for schools and
rugby player agents.
I got to hear about it – as is often the case when it comes to what’s really going on behind the scenes – via the online content of colleague and friend, ruggas.co.za.
He posted an excellent piece about something I was not aware of: World Rugby has a regulation that says a “development fee” must be paid when players between the ages of 17 and 23 are transferred between clubs. It stipulates that 5 000 pounds per year that the player was developed by his previous club must go to them in compensation for his being whisked away as an already developed player. That’s a lot of money and the intention is clearly to encourage clubs to develop their own players, not to poach them after others have done that job.
Starting to ring bells?
SA Rugby, which is obliged to follow World Rugby’s rules, has introduced a more thrifty version. When a player is recruited out of school, R1 000 per year must be paid (for a 1st XV player), R3 000 for one who has played in the Grant Khomo Week, R5 000 for a Craven Week player and R10 000 for an SA Schools player. It’s happening, Ruggas says, but the problem is that the money is going to the provincial unions, not to the schools that actually spotted and developed the players.
If the money went to the school, and was allocated according to the number of years that the player attended the school, it could encourage schools to develop their own talent, not buy it in only in the senior years.
The debate this week followed a suggestion that schools should employ agents who would, as I understand it, have the sole mandate over their players and would split the profits made out of getting them contracts with the school. That money can be used to further improve the school’s rugby programme and, it’s suggested, for bursaries to drive transformation.
As I said, I don’t fully understand the financial and legal arrangements and implications, but I can see how, if the World Rugby development fee rule is followed, and given that it will be in the agent’s interest to retain “his” talented players, this can be a disincentive to poaching.
I’m not sure I understand it, but I am certain that I don’t buy it. We are talking about 18 year-old children, remember, and the process starts much earlier. Some say, unbelievably, that there is even “contracting” of players at 12 years of age when they leave primary school. I know that the grade seven year is a major shopping window for rugby bursary-offering high schools.
The answer is simple – keep away and leave the schoolboys alone! Let them leave school, then start treating them like professionals. The “head start” that our excellent school rugby setup is supposed to give us is proving to be myth – if you look at the SA Schools and national under-20 team results – so stop justifying these obviously uneducational and unethical practices in terms of that.
Schools do need money to develop players, especially players from disadvantaged backgrounds, but that should be the responsibility of the sports and education departments. When we start seeing the professionalisation of child players as a source of funding, we are in deep trouble. The best schoolboy coaches teach rugby skills and techniques, but they also want the boys they coach to become good human beings. They don’t need potential earnings and income for the school to be part of that. That isn’t what sport at school is there for.
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