Bill Sweeney gets his bonus

[Banquo]

Rugby people: "We're sick of 57 amateur old farts, this is a modern professional world. We need board room professionals on the RFU board"
Also rugby people: "What do you mean these board room professionals are acting like board room professionals? We need people with passion, and personal investment in the sport to be running the game"

TBH most of the folks I know running clubs agree with the former, but it's WHO the board room professionals are, what they've delivered, and how much they are paid; the latter wouldn't be so much of a problem if the delivery was top notch. The problem is the governance, which Freshfields have just said was fine......but without real context frankly; and which is simultaneously under review.

[Mellsblue]

Rugby people: "We're sick of 57 amateur old farts, this is a modern professional world. We need board room professionals on the RFU board"
Also rugby people: "What do you mean these board room professionals are acting like board room professionals? We need people with passion, and personal investment in the sport to be running the game"

Very similar to my first thought. You can’t have it both ways.
In the longer term who on earth will apply to replace Sweeney. You’d have to be mad and be happy to not accept a contractually agreed bonus if the mood music ain’t right.

[Puja]

Rugby people: "We're sick of 57 amateur old farts, this is a modern professional world. We need board room professionals on the RFU board"
Also rugby people: "What do you mean these board room professionals are acting like board room professionals? We need people with passion, and personal investment in the sport to be running the game"

I suppose the key question is whether Sweeney provides £760k of benefit annually to the RFU as a board room professional, or, more accurately, whether the deficit in performance provided by someone who would be willing to be employed for £260k would genuinely be half a million lower. There's probably a middle ground between 57 old farts and competing with top-dollar boards for leadership talent.

Puja

[jngf]

Rugby people: "We're sick of 57 amateur old farts, this is a modern professional world. We need board room professionals on the RFU board"
Also rugby people: "What do you mean these board room professionals are acting like board room professionals? We need people with passion, and personal investment in the sport to be running the game"

I suppose the key question is whether Sweeney provides £760k of benefit annually to the RFU as a board room professional, or, more accurately, whether the deficit in performance provided by someone who would be willing to be employed for £260k would genuinely be half a million lower. There's probably a middle ground between 57 old farts and competing with top-dollar boards for leadership talent.

Puja

I think £260k would get you a more than competent CEO, the larger salaries CEOs award themselves ( like BBC execs) and even council and trade union leaders are a result of the cartels that tend to form in any profession - rather than necessarily correlated to increased capability + they all have agents and headhunters who are actively rewarded by such salary inflation for placing candidates with clients

[marklc]

Sorry everyone. For the dido harding jibe It was a bad attempt at a joke. However, stranger things have happened in the star chamber at RFU. Love the site, guys, keep up the good work. I don't post much but visit everyday. I am a Wakefield supporter then after we became the parrot in monty python, I started following wasps. Mainly because I didn't need to get a new scarf, same colours. Took my boys down to London many a time. Loved it. Then it happened again. Again love the site.

[Puja]

Sorry everyone. For the dido harding jibe It was a bad attempt at a joke. However, stranger things have happened in the star chamber at RFU. Love the site, guys, keep up the good work. I don't post much but visit everyday. I am a Wakefield supporter then after we became the parrot in monty python, I started following wasps. Mainly because I didn't need to get a new scarf, same colours. Took my boys down to London many a time. Loved it. Then it happened again. Again love the site.

Not a problem! I mean, you scared me out of a few years of my life because it was so worryingly plausible, but not a problem!

Feel free to chip in more if you fancy - we don't bite.

Puja

[Banquo]

Sorry everyone. For the dido harding jibe It was a bad attempt at a joke. However, stranger things have happened in the star chamber at RFU. Love the site, guys, keep up the good work. I don't post much but visit everyday. I am a Wakefield supporter then after we became the parrot in monty python, I started following wasps. Mainly because I didn't need to get a new scarf, same colours. Took my boys down to London many a time. Loved it. Then it happened again. Again love the site.

Hi- my f-in-law was a big Wakefield man, broke his heart when they folded; my missis is a wakey girl.

[Stom]

Thought this might go here.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/ ... yonce-spat

Honestly, I think he's bang on about this. The restrictions are ridiculous, and do not make sense. So the council does need to make a decision on what it does.

Yes, I know, if you live on Talma Gardens (that's where my piano teacher lived when I was a kid), you're going to get very loud evenings around concerts...

But you also get a lot of benefits from the RFU, too. I don't know what it is like now, but you get free tickets. My great aunt lived on the other side of the stadium and would regularly get free tickets, that's how I got to go to England matches as a kid.

[Puja]

Thought this might go here.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/ ... yonce-spat

Honestly, I think he's bang on about this. The restrictions are ridiculous, and do not make sense. So the council does need to make a decision on what it does.

Yes, I know, if you live on Talma Gardens (that's where my piano teacher lived when I was a kid), you're going to get very loud evenings around concerts...

But you also get a lot of benefits from the RFU, too. I don't know what it is like now, but you get free tickets. My great aunt lived on the other side of the stadium and would regularly get free tickets, that's how I got to go to England matches as a kid.

I don't know that I'd necessarily be against moving away from Twickenham.

I know that it's iconic and historic and all of that, but the truth remains that, if you were making a decision on where to put England's national rugby stadium, you would never choose that location. The transport links are risible, and the closeness of high-priced residential area to the stadium is always going to be trouble, both for the inhabitants and the stink that they will raise when inconvenienced. Moreover, it is ridiculous for a financially precarious organisation to have an asset of an 80,000 seater stadium and then only legally be allowed to use it 15 days a year.

Moving outside of London would lose a lot of cachet, but if it's a choice between investing £660m in renovating Twickenham to where it needs to be and spending £1bn on building something world class at the other end of HS2, with a tidy sum coming from selling 10 acres of south west London building land, it's potentially worth considering.

My only red line would be that we should only do it if we're going to build an RFU-owned specialist rugby stadium. No renting at Wembley or any nonsense like that.

Puja

[Banquo]

Thought this might go here.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/ ... yonce-spat

Honestly, I think he's bang on about this. The restrictions are ridiculous, and do not make sense. So the council does need to make a decision on what it does.

Yes, I know, if you live on Talma Gardens (that's where my piano teacher lived when I was a kid), you're going to get very loud evenings around concerts...

But you also get a lot of benefits from the RFU, too. I don't know what it is like now, but you get free tickets. My great aunt lived on the other side of the stadium and would regularly get free tickets, that's how I got to go to England matches as a kid.

At a different scale but the residents round us kibosh everything they possibly can.

[Oakboy]

Can English rugby think big? Can it sacrifice tradition and secure a financial future?

I hope so.

Presumably, proper research is being done to ensure that ticket sales and hospitality income can be maintained away from London.

[Mellsblue]

Sweeney lives! And by quite a large margin winning a referendum on his leadership by 466 to 206 votes

[Banquo]

Sweeney lives! And by quite a large margin winning a referendum on his leadership by 466 to 206 votes

half the clubs didn't even vote; apparently 39 clubs went along and didn't vote either!!

Can't really moan if that disinterested.

[Which Tyler]

Biggest turn out in 20 years.

It's almhsrdly a ringing endorsement, but then, it's also hardly the makings of a sword of damocles

[Banquo]

Biggest turn out in 20 years.

It's almhsrdly a ringing endorsement, but then, it's also hardly the makings of a sword of damocles

pretty low bar tbh, and after all the time and effort WGU put in, they'll be gutted. Didn't help their cause when Sigley volte faced at the last minute.


wtaf PRL and the RFU can't sort their sh*t out is my beef. And I know where 90% of the fault lies.

[Which Tyler]

Brian Moore has his say
Why I have had enough of listening to the RFU rebels
Bill Sweeney’s enemies are apparently not for giving up, but they will succeed only in damaging the grass-roots game they profess to defend

Includes this paragraph

Here are some facts to counter the months of damaging spin. This was never about Sweeney’s salary and bonus. If it had been there would have been demands for the other six directors similarly remunerated to also resign, along with all members of the committee who awarded the contracts. The malcontents engaged a former sports journalist to head a covert campaign of selective and anonymous leaks to the press. They claimed it was about the good of the English game. The truth is that it was nothing more than a demand by the Championship clubs for more cash and a demand by some RFU Council members, particularly a section of referees, to go back to the days when the governing body was wholly run by ‘57 old farts’.

Of course, opinions may vary

[Banquo]

Brian Moore has his say
Why I have had enough of listening to the RFU rebels
Bill Sweeney’s enemies are apparently not for giving up, but they will succeed only in damaging the grass-roots game they profess to defend

Includes this paragraph

Here are some facts to counter the months of damaging spin. This was never about Sweeney’s salary and bonus. If it had been there would have been demands for the other six directors similarly remunerated to also resign, along with all members of the committee who awarded the contracts. The malcontents engaged a former sports journalist to head a covert campaign of selective and anonymous leaks to the press. They claimed it was about the good of the English game. The truth is that it was nothing more than a demand by the Championship clubs for more cash and a demand by some RFU Council members, particularly a section of referees, to go back to the days when the governing body was wholly run by ‘57 old farts’.

Of course, opinions may vary

I agree the approach is somewhat nihilistic and I didn’t support what the champ clubs had been doing for the reasons he outlines. The game/RFU does not owe the champ clubs a living; that said, a lot of champ clubs were given a level of funding - 650k per club- back in the day that set some on a path of premiership attainment which looked realistic…. Until pulled away by the RFU for both funding and a made up set of standards.

He has got some facts wrong and not given the above context, but as above, agree with the conclusion. Then again T2 board is pretty clear about aims and structures which unfortunately are taking a ridiculous amount of time to come to fruition. This attack by Moore will really hurt the folks at his old club- and for all I don’t agree with their tactics, their hearts are in the right place and their are individuals there who have put their cash and soul into keeping the club alive, and rightly or wrongly feel stitched up.