Scottish Rugby Union figures make alarming reading amid leading players’ exodus and terrible results

On the face of it the financial accounts of the Scottish Rugby Union brought positive news, with income from the Six Nations on the rise and the injection of cash from the Rugby World Cup helping to take them out of the red and into the black to the tune of £1.5m.

But one line among the 28-page financial statement raised more than just eyebrows. The revelation that “the highest paid director received aggregate emoluments of £933,000”, more than double what was paid in 2018/19, should prompt serious questions of how the SRU are being governed.

The sum, which was paid to chief executive Mark Dodson, is a significant increase on the £455,000 salary the previous year and is considerably more than what is being paid to Rugby Football Union chief executive Bill Sweeney – and three times as much as Wales’s Martyn Phillips.

Dodson is joined as executives on the Scottish Rugby board by chief operating officer Dominic McKay, finance director Andrew Healey and general counsel Robert Howat, who are all signed up to a 'Long Term Incentive Plan' to "attract, retain and incentivise participating employees over longer term periods and achieve alignment with the organisation's medium and long term strategic initiatives and targets".

Eye-watering governance salaries are far from a surprise in the 2020s, but when the boss of a union that has just £1.5m in the bank takes home nearly two-thirds of it per year, alarm bells have to be ringing. This, remember, is a union that has not won a major trophy in two decades and failed to make it out of the pools of last year’s Rugby World Cup, though the results apply up to the year ending 31 May 2019.

Matched up against this bumper pay day is the departure of Scotland’s best talent. Stuart Hogg has left Glasgow Warriors, with Jonny Gray set to join him at Exeter Chiefs this summer, while superstar fly-half Finn Russell is plying his trade in France with Racing 92 on a reported £700,000-a-year deal. There has been a trend over the last two years of Scotland’s best talent moving away from the country and the SRU-owned Glasgow Warriors and Edinburgh Rugby, and yet investment into the professional clubs and national team increased by £1.9m during the same time frame.

The SRU’s turnover for the year was £61m, up from £57.2m, but profit before tax dropped from £1.8m to £308,000, and the World Cup funds are unlikely to make up for the loss of the autumn internationals last November. To use England as an example, the RFU are expecting significant losses due to the absence of the £10m injections they receive from each match they host at Twickenham.

It would be far to say that Scottish rugby is at a crossroads. The progression that they made in the last decade, first under Vern Cotter and then Gregor Townsend, cannot mask the fact that the results have not arrived. They have finished inside the top three as many times as they have finished bottom of the Championship (twice) and have not broken into the top two, which doesn’t quite justify the accolade of having the highest-paid chief executive within the home nations.

In total, the board of directors made up of 12 individuals saw their collective salary increase from £1.13m to £2.246m, quantifying a handsome pay day for all, coming in a year when Scotland finished fifth in the Six Nations and only saved face by claiming a rare draw at Twickenham when England threw away a 31-0 lead. Add to that the World Cup failure, and similar figures in next year’s accounts will make impossible reading.

When contacted by The Independent, the SRU confirmed that the salary increase was part of the five-year ‘Long Term Incentive Plan’ that Dodson and other directors are signed up to, which aims to ‘retain and incentivise participating employees over longer term periods’.

A statement read: “Scottish Rugby can confirm its accounts noted in companies house reflect payments made to its most senior director and all directors for the last financial year, which reflect the individuals’ contribution to its Long Term Incentive Plan to deliver on the organisation’s strategic initiatives and targets.

“The directors’ fees and salaries for 2019 also contain bonuses covering the first three years of a five-year plan, 2015/16, 2016/17 and 2017/18 as well as annual bonus awards for 2017/18 and 2018/19.

“Financial turnover grew over that period from £47.4m in 2015/16 to £61.1m in 2018/19.

The Company’s Remuneration Committee sets the parameters of annual medium- and long-term objectives and targets and assesses progress against them, before deciding whether any award should be made under the annual bonus scheme or Long Term Incentive Plan.”