Jeff Probyn: All shapes and sizes should play rugby

Money, money, money, it’s a rich man’s sport. The increase in the salary cap, up by £500,000 to £5 million, will do little to help the
English Premiership compete with their French neighbours when it comes to buying or keeping the best.
Although the Premiership clubs can each exclude one player from the salary cap, some, including Saracens, have senior squads of around 40 players with a mixture of former and current internationals (foreign or English) and quality club players, and with 40 that averages out at just £125,000 each.
With double the salary cap for roughly the same size squads the French club player averages around 250,000 euros (£206,848) each and, when added to a French lifestyle, gives the French clubs a massive advantage in player recruitment  both on and off the field.
Of all the countries in the Six Nations, only the French generate the levels of spectators through the gates at club level to ensure profits.
Around 300,000 people watch at the various Top14 venues per weekend, which is more than the combined ticket sales and BT audience for our Premierships (60-70,000 at grounds and 115,000 viewers).
That also drives up the Top14 TV revenues (£59 million as opposed to the Premiership £20 million) explaining why they will always have more money for players than everyone else.
What this shows is (contrary to what many assume) the game is attractive enough in its current form and could generate a high growth in spectators. This would boost clubs to a level where they can, and should, be self-sufficient and the fact that in England clubs aren’t must be down to other factors!
Included in those other factors is the way in which teams are told to play by their coaches in league games.
Having watched quite a few Top14 and Premiership games I have to say that the standard of competition and play is markedly better in the Top14.
The Premiership coaches and clubs constantly wheel out that old chestnut that it is fear of relegation that stifles adventure and is responsible for the number of defensive, dull games.
Take away relegation they say, and the flood gates would open as each team in the Premiership would throw caution to the wind and begin playing with the running, handling style of a Fijian Sevens side on a sunny summer’s day.
This defence doesn’t stack up when the comparison is made with the Top14 because they are also a club league that ‘suffers’ relegation.
I am disappointed that Stuart Lancaster seems to think he needs to “encourage everyone involved in the making of the Laws and the structure of the game to try to make it as good a spectator sport as humanly possible,” and so is effectively trying to pass responsibility for an ‘entertaining’ game to the IRB and the Unions away from the coaches.
Whatever law changes the IRB and Unions agree are translated into the game by those that coach at all levels and in all countries.
Over the years at the behest of various interested groups, Laws are changed and each time they are ‘trialled’ in some way before being rolled out throughout the game.
Each time there are slight variances that are added as a result of the trials, with the hope that the Law will improve the fluidity of the game while reducing injury risk to players.
Inevitably a few months after they are introduced to the game, coaches workout how to adapt them to the advantage of their teams, all this, it would seem, with little or no thought of the consequences for the opposition, match officials, or indeed, the game itself.
For professional coaches at all levels of the game, winning and keeping their job seems to be more important than game development.
Rugby used to be a game for all shapes and sizes with different positions requiring different skill sets which players of different sizes could fulfil.
Now size (not talent) is what counts at the top of the game as coaches refuse to pick any young players who are not a certain size and this, sadly, is slowly filtering down the leagues reducing the prospects of young players who dream of playing for England.
If I was starting out now at 5ft 10ins and 16st there is no way I would be given a professional contract as a prop by a
Premiership club, let alone make it to the England squad, not because of a lack of ability but because I would now be considered too small.
When I was playing, I was considered the best tighthead prop in the world, despite the fact that I wasn’t six foot or over!
A lack of imagination and a fear of losing their well-paid jobs limits the number of coaches in the Premiership prepared to allow players to experiment and try out different things or play instinctively.
Lancaster comments that “supporters are the lifeblood of the game and the people playing it, including kids, also have to enjoy it and sometimes the complexity of rugby’s rules or its stop-start nature can take that away.”  That really doesn’t ring true.
He is right that supporters and the money they bring are the lifeblood of any professional sport – but one thing supporters hate is the constant chopping and changing of the Laws and that’s why the IRB put a moratorium on Law changes close to World Cups.
This is so that fans and players know and understand the game they are playing and watching which helps create a more fluid and entertaining match for all.
For players and match officials, the constant changes in the Laws and the resulting confusion in the way games are played and officiated can take away the enjoyment of playing.
Part of the appeal of rugby is the complex nature of the game which allowed all shapes and sizes to take part and therefore changes should be kept to a minimum so as not to change the character of the sport.
What we are now seeing is a game that is becoming one dimensional and less complex where size and power dominate every position, reducing the opportunity for skilful, smaller, normal size players.
The legacy that Lancaster and the Union need from a successful campaign in 2015, is placing less importance on making the game a fantastic spectator sport and more on a return to a game for all shapes and sizes where all can take part with equal opportunity to reach to the top.