Harsh reality hits when pay cheques dry up

FROM THE BLINDSIDE: Professional rugby players get well paid but anyone on the outside thinking players are made for life off…

FROM THE BLINDSIDE:Professional rugby players get well paid but anyone on the outside thinking players are made for life off the back of it is fooling themselves

Money is tight everywhere. It’s just a fact of life.

Look at Wasps, a great club that have got into big trouble now and are desperate for a buyer or else they will go into administration. Look at the clubs in Wales who can’t keep their players from leaving because they can’t afford their contracts.

Big players are going to France, Tommy Bowe was let out of his contract early to come back to play in Ireland. Everywhere you look, there isn’t enough money coming in to cover what’s going out.

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In Ireland, none of the provinces cover costs from year to year. Player salaries, staff salaries, travel costs, rental of facilities – they all cost more money than the provinces are able to bring in. All four of them lose money for the IRFU, who make it back through the international game.

People assume that there’s lots of money in the game because it’s a professional sport but every cent somehow finds a home quickly enough.

At a player’s level, there’s a living to be made and careers are short. Say if you’re a non-international player in the English Premiership, the average salary would be in the region of £125,00-£150,000 a year (about €152,000-€182,000 a year).

An international will make around double that with match fees and bonuses on top.

As most people know, the money in France can go a lot higher, with the top guys making up to €750,000 a year.

But then, a club like Toulouse works off an annual budget of over €30 million. In Ireland, the four provinces combined wouldn’t come close to that.

Munster’s total budget for the year is somewhere around the €5 million mark so the idea of trying to match the salaries on offer in France is a non-starter.

A young guy coming out of the academy in Ireland would expect a first contract of maybe €35,000 and it goes up in levels from there on. A provincial player who’s a regular but not an international will make between €85,000 and €120,000 a year, but that rises if and when he becomes an international.

A top-class overseas international will be up there with the top Irish earners, earning anything from €250,000 upwards.

It sounds like a lot of money if you’re a punter sitting in the stand but as I say, careers are short.

Most contract negotiations these days are done between agents and the contract committee but it’s not long since it was just a case of someone in the union handing you the paper and saying, “Here, sign this”. And you’d be delighted to as well. My first contract in 1997 was part-time and worth £7,500. They threw in match fees of £700 for Heineken Cup games and £300 for interprovincial matches.

I couldn’t have been happier. The following year, I got a full-time provincial contract worth £25,000, which was unbelievable.

Over the years, the IRFU were very fair with me and I think just about any Irish player who dealt with them would say pretty much the same. In fairness, they probably got to a point a few years back where they were sometimes handing out bigger contracts than they needed to and as a result, they’ve tightened up a bit over the last while. I’ve heard stories of guys getting past 31 or 32 and having to take pay cuts to get another contract.

That’s rough on them but I guess the union has to balance the books somehow. I know they started to become a lot stricter on what they give out and that they’ve made contracts a lot more incentive-based than they used to be.

There was a time when a guy might have got on the Ireland team for two or three caps and earned himself a very good national contract but then his form dipped and he never got a call-up again. A player like that would have still been on a national contract a couple of years after playing for the national team.

The union have tightened up a lot on that kind of thing over the past couple of years and these days, unless you’re one of the real regulars, your contract will generally contain incentives that you’ll only get if you fight your way into the national reckoning and stay there. Which is fair enough I think.

I never minded going along with that kind of approach. I probably picked up a few too many injuries at the wrong times to get myself up into the realm of top earners in Irish rugby but I always knew that if I could get on a roll and get sustained game-time with the Ireland team, they would deal with me in a fair way.

I had a couple of chances to go and play in France down the years but they would have wanted to have been for stupid money to get me to leave Munster.

As it was, you were talking a difference of maybe €30,000 at best. It wasn’t worth it, not when I’d have been passing up the chance of winning the Heineken Cup with Munster. If I’d been playing for a French team when Munster won it, I’d never have forgiven myself.

As it was, I did okay. But I worked for everything I got. I had five years as a mechanic before I ever got paid for playing rugby so I never took the job for granted.

There’s nothing easy about the life of a professional rugby player. I’ve had friends say to me that they’d give their right arm to play the game full-time and they’re right to have that sort of desire.

But I’m not so sure they really know how much goes into it, how much you give up in terms of a normal life.

Whatever salary you’re able to get out of it is well deserved. Put it this way – the top earners in Irish rugby are the likes of Brian O’Driscoll, Ronan O’Gara, Paul O’Connell. I can promise you those guys would still be playing at the level they’re at if there was no money in the game.

As you get towards the end of your playing career, the question of money obviously looms in front of you. The Irish Rugby Union Players Association has done some great work since its inception, providing players with advice and support networks and business contacts for when you’re finished.

You know that there’s going to come a time when the bills won’t automatically be paid every month so you try to provide for when that time comes. You have access to pension schemes and investment opportunities – they don’t always work out but you go in knowing the risks.

Professional rugby players get well paid when they’re in the middle of it but anyone on the outside thinking that they’re made for life off the back of it is fooling themselves. Your career ends in your mid-30s if you’re lucky and then you’re out into the world looking for a way to make a living. The things you took for granted before – small things like medical insurance or whatever – are your own responsibility now. You do your best to prepare for it but it’s those little things that you don’t expect.

The financial rewards won’t last like they last for the soccer players in England. And, to be honest about it, there is a bit of jealousy there. I love watching soccer but I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t compare the physical toll on a rugby player to that of a soccer player.

We spend our careers bruised and battered and we hammer the shite out of each other even in training. And for some diving little brat like Ashley Young to possibly earn in a month what it takes a top rugby player to earn in a year is hard to take.

Of course there’s some jealousy there. But I wouldn’t get too hung up on it. Too busy, for one thing. I’m coming close to a year of retirement from the game so the memory of what it’s like when the pay cheques dry up is still fresh.

It’s scary when it happens, no matter how much you’ve put in place. I’ve been pretty lucky to get a chance to go into broadcasting which at least has kept a stream of income going.

But the truth is I’m probably only making about a third of what my salary was as a player. I’m not saying “Poor me” – not at all. Just trying to give you an idea of what happens.

What’s interesting though is that the game is still what brings you back.

Whether it’s coaching, media work, administration or whatever else, players find it very hard to leave the game after they’re done. That’s the draw of it, no matter what the pay cheque says.

FROM THE BLINDSIDE