Rugby union opens the floodgates

STEVE BALE

Rugby Union Correspondent reports from Paris

Rugby union's governing body yesterday laid to rest more than a century and a half of amateurism which had degenerated into shamateurism when it officially sold this discredited principle down the River Seine and declared the game "open". This is a euphemism for openly professional.

So with one bound they were free of all the restrictions, including even not paying for playing which until the last moment had been considered sacrosanct, that have in recent years been increasingly honoured in the breach. And the leading players are free to ply their wares at the market rate.

The Rugby Football Union's deal with the England players, expected to garner each international around pounds 40,000 for a full season's Test matches, will be unaffected in the sense that there will no more cash available. However, they are now certain to press for payment to be made directly rather than through trust funds and last night Tony Hallett, the new RFU secretary, anticipated that this change would have to be accepted.

The breathtaking sweep of the International Rugby Football Board council's conclusions when it ended its three-day deliberations, stretching over 16 hours, with yesterday's pronouncement was surprising because it had been widely touted, from within as well as outside the IRFB, that the earning opportunities attendant on the abandonment of amateurism would stop short of straight match fees.

As Hallett put it: "We are now talking about pay-for-play, which we weren't talking about two days ago." However, the IRFB - to the dismay of some of its delegates and certainly a significant swathe of the RFU committee back in England - resolved that anything short of out-and-out professionalism would be impossible to control.

Thus the entire game, down to its lowest levels, will from the IRFB's autumn meeting in Tokyo at the end of next month be open, with no limit on payments to players or indeed officials and even win bonuses tolerated. Though Vernon Pugh, the Welshman who has led the board's amateurism working party, denied it, there is no doubt that the attempt by Kerry Packer's World Rugby Championship to take over rugby by buying up all the world's top players encouraged a radical approach.

"We are entering a very different world," Pugh said. "The game will change for all concerned, including players and administrators alike. The challenge is to retain the special character which has helped make rugby so popular. The decision of the council is an extremely positive and bold one."

But it did not come without demur. Argentina and Canada, for instance, do not have the resources to go professional even if they wanted to and in the end a fair proportion of the delegates from the 12 countries (England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Italy and Japan as well as the Argentinians and Canadians) were moved by fatalism as a result of the summer's developments rather than any great enthusiasm.

It is as if Packer's doomed attempt to muscle in on big-time rugby never happened but the figures being bandied about by the Australian's minions were so substantial that international and provincial players around the world were instantly placed in an unprecedentedly powerful bargaining position.

Thus if the board had not come to yesterday's decisions, many of its member unions would simply have proceeded unilaterally with whatever contractual arrangements they saw fit in order to ensure that the Packer menace was not revived. "What has happened in the last six to eight weeks has certainly focused attention on matters even more important than whether it is an amateur or professional game: that is, who runs the game," Pugh said. "Certainly, it has added some urgency to our discussion."

The practical process that will now take place will begin with the drawing- up of a revised set of participation regulations to be enshrined in rugby's statute-book at the Tokyo meeting. This will be accompanied by the repeal of the regulations governing amateurism which have been hanging like an albatross round rugby union.

Rugby will then become an "open" game without restriction on payments or any other material benefits to anyone involved at any level, with no ceiling and no bar to payment by result. However, the IRFB has given individual unions a let-out by declaring the new dispensation to be "permissive" and not compulsory. It will therefore be up to individual rugby unions to introduce less liberal regulations if they see fit.

Yesterday's events left several matters unresolved, notably the status of former union players who had disqualified themselves by turning professional with rugby league clubs. The council expects to settle this next month, by which time it also intends to have drawn up a code of practice concerning not only the administration of professionalism but associated matters such as transfers, national qualification and how to ensure that rugby's smaller unions - the vast majority of the 67 belonging to the board - do not become even more impecunious as a result of the introduction of professionalism.

Its workings are bound to be the subject of prolonged controversy and, doubtless, resistance but in simultaneously opening up a new world and a can of worms, the International Board has in effect rendered the financial practices of rugby union precisely the same as rugby league, which by stunning coincidence, was born precisely 100 years ago tomorrow. When asked yesterday to identify the differences, Pugh came up with just two: 15 players to 13 and line-outs.

n Maurice Lindsay, the chief executive of the Rugby League, opened the debate on the relationship between the two codes yesterday. "At least this shamat- eurism of payments under the counter will disappear and the regulations in their books, which effectively are in there to keep us away from them, will have to be struck out," he said.

Leading article, page 12

Wales trounced, page 17

WHAT THE INTERNATIONAL BOARD DECIDED

Revised "participation in the game" regulations to be drawn up at Tokyo meeting next month.

Amateur regulations to be repealed after adoption of new regulations.

Rugby to become open: no prohibition on payment or material benefit to anyone at any level; no pay ceiling; win bonuses permitted.

Unions may put in place more restrictive domestic regulations.

Admission/reinstatement of rugby league players to be determined in Tokyo.