Jeff Probyn: Being paid to play for your country feels wrong

A question that is often asked is what price international rugby? Well, now we know.  If the players play as many matches as they did last year the answer is that it will be around £180,000 each and that’s without added bonuses.
The new deal that has been structured between the RFU and the players has raised their fee to £15,000 per match once everything is added together and is an attempt to try and pre-empt the threat of a player strike which has happened at two previous World Cups.
The increasing profile of the World Cup and the needs of the Union to call on players to help fulfil commitments made to sponsors has led to demands by players for more of the money generated to be diverted to them.
Back in 2003, there was the threat of a players strike unless more money was made available which was taken so seriously that plans were put in place to field a second division team should negotiations fail and, again in 2007, there was a threat to boycott sponsors functions that led to increased payments.
It’s not only the England players that have used this form of threatening negotiation. The South Africans once famously refused to leave the dressing room just before kick-off unless they got a bigger match fee.
To a certain extent you can understand why players choose the high profile of a World Cup as the time to voice their demands for extra cash as no Union would want to be forced into trying to find a new team at short notice.
I must admit that there is a bit of me that is slightly envious, as my 37 caps would have netted me over £500,000!
If I added to that the many games I played for England that weren’t capped games in those days, it would take the figure to over £1million and that’s without the money that a 20 year Premiership career would have earned.
However, I still find it a bit strange that players demand money for playing for England as it increases the amount of money they earn from the game.
The international match fee is a massive sum if you consider that the average wage of a professional rugby player was around £56,000 in February 2012.
Any player who reaches international level is likely to earn at least half a much again from his club than players that don’t and they are also likely to attract bigger personal sponsorships that may even overtake the money they earn from playing.
Jonny Wilkinson was paid around £250,000 by Newcastle and yet earned around £6 million a year from sponsors because of his legendary status.
Many will say the players deserve it considering how much footballers get paid, but although footballers get paid a fortune for playing for their clubs they get nothing for playing for England as they donate all the money they would earn (£1,500 for a win) to charity.
What players earn for playing for their clubs is a business matter, footballers get more because more people pay to watch them but it is probable that as crowds grow in rugby so will players’ wages.
It was my generation of players that opened the door to the professional game as more and more demands were being made of us in the pursuit of a better spectator sport to encourage the growth of the game and raise greater revenue for the Unions.
Even the first World Cup was something that some Unions took part in reluctantly, but once the profits rolled in everybody embraced the concept and international training was dramatically improved and expanded.
When I joined the squad in 1985 match preparations were similar to a club’s, (50 scrums, 50 lineouts and a bit of unopposed). But by 1990 we had athletic training and testing including aerobic, anaerobic, plyometrics, weights, special diets, body fat tests and the dreaded bleep test.
We were told we were expected to train at least three hours a day, something that was nigh on impossible if you had a full time job, which as we only got expenses (20p per mile for travel) was a necessity.
At the time, it was against the laws of the game to pay professional wages so we tried to raise money ourselves by attracting our own sponsors and making personal appearances in the same way as the All Blacks. The England squad set up a company called Player Vision that would collect the money and hold it until a player retired and then, once out of the game, he would get his share based on how many years he had been part of the squad.
In the World Cup year we managed to attract around £250,000 in sponsorship and had some senior members of the squad including Will Carling, Brian Moore and Rob Andrew liaising with a company, Parallel Media, that promoted us.
Despite paying only £3,000 to each of the 24 squad members somehow the rest of the money disappeared and despite investigative attempts, we never did find out where the rest went and Player Vision folded the following year.
Fortunately, the game went Professional and the problems of trying to balance a professional life with an international career disappeared with the advent of full time professional rugby.
To me, playing for your country is a different matter and should never be about money. I am sure the players today feel the same, the idea of a match fee that in a year can be three times the average salary of your club’s teammates seems slightly wrong.