UK Edition
England players vote not to give Samoans handout as RFU fears being caught up in World Rugby row
Dan Cole, the England prop, believes Samoa’s players would have been placed in compromising position had the England squad donated part of their match fee of £22,000 each to their opponents on Saturday at Twickenham.
England players Mako Vunipola and Manu Tuilagi, who are of Tongan and Samoan heritage, had proposed donating at least £1,000 per player towards their counterparts, who will receive a £650 match fee. However, the senior player group this week agreed not to make such a gesture. It is understood there would have been issues with tax had money being transferred directly between players.
The Rugby Football Union was also wary of putting themselves in a middle of a dispute between the Samoa Rugby Union, whose chairman claims it is bankrupt, and World Rugby, which says it is not.
“We’ve met as a senior player group and discussed the issue with the squad,” Cole said. “It was along the ethics of paying an opposition to play against you and the future issues it might create in regards to, not so much opposition asking for pay, but the potential... looks like, ‘we’ve paid you before now you owe us a favour’.
“It’s above our station as players. We play the game against the opposition, whoever we play, and it’s not for us to get involved in the politics of paying people. The issue is with the unions, World Rugby, it’s that balance of things. I would love for other nations to get paid what we get paid.”
The RFU, which generate a turnover of around £5 million from Saturday’s game, has already donated £75,000 towards the Samoan Rugby Union as a goodwill gesture. Funds for the players are still being raised through a Just Giving page set up by Dan Leo, the chief executive of the Pacific Rugby Players’ Welfare organisation, who has also launched #helpsamoa on social media.
Leo has already raised more than £6,000 but says that even the England players’ donation would have been only a short-term solution. “I know that there were lots of England players who wanted to help but there were some practical difficulties,” Leo told The Daily Telegraph. “Ultimately, it would have just been a band-aid solution to get us through this particular crisis.”
The long-term solution, Leo believes, lies in changing the current revenue generating model where unions are entitled to all the profits of a home gate. While England can generate up to £10 million per home Test, Samoa struggle to attract tier-one nations – England have never played in any of the Pacific Islands – and claim to have lost money on hosting New Zealand in 2015.
“We will back here again in three years or four years unless World Rugby really addresses this issue,” Leo said. “We cannot accept a model where the Pacific Island nations are purely dependent on World Rugby handouts. You have to change the model because at the moment it is broken.”
Another major step to allow Pacific Island nations to compete on an equal footing would be to follow rugby league’s lead in relaxing the eligibility rules, according to Samoa fly-half Tim Nanai-Williams. While Fiji were the last Pacific Island nation to qualify for the World Cup quarter-finals in 2007, both Tonga and Fiji, who knocked out New Zealand, will contest the rugby league World Cup semi-finals.
In league, a recent law change allowed players not selected by tier-one teams to switch allegiances to developing nations for whom they are eligible. Hence, Jarryd Hayne, the two-time NRL player of the year, will play for Fiji against Australia on Friday while another NRL superstar, Jason Taumalolo, chose to represent Tonga over New Zealand.
A similar policy within rugby could allow players such as England centre Tuilagi and Sonny Bill Williams (Nanai-Williams’s cousin), eventually to represent Samoa and reverse the talent drain from the Pacific Island nations.
“I would love to see that happen,” Williams said. “It is great in my eyes to see league doing that. I don’t know if you are watching the World Cup but it is a real level playing field. Everyone before was saying that it would be Australia and New Zealand in the final and now you have Fiji and Tonga in the semi-finals. If that was to happen in rugby that would be unreal and would make the game a lot better.
“You can only imagine what it would do for world rugby and for Manu Samoa if that ever happened with guys changing their allegiances. You see some of the stuff on social media with those Samoan XV, guys from Samoa who have never played for Manu, and the Tongan XV. It is quite scary when you see the Pacific Island boys who have played for other countries.”
Meanwhile, Danny Care is poised to win a place in the starting line-up to face Samoa on Saturday after his sublime cameo off the bench against Australia during which he created tries for Jonathan Joseph and Jonny May and scored one of his own.
Care is expected to be named alongside George Ford, who is in contention to captain the side along with Chris Robshaw should Eddie Jones decide to give a first start to Jamie George at hooker and rest Dylan Hartley.
Mike Brown is also expected to return to the starting XV after missing the victory over Australia with a head injury.
Samoa have named their starting XV that includes seven English-based players, including Wasps centre Alapati Leiua and Bristol’s Chris Vui, who will captain the side.
Samoa XV: Ahsee Tuala, Paul Perez, Kieron Fonotia, Alapati Leiua, David Lemi, Tim Nanai-Williams, Dwayne Polataivao; Jordan Lay, Motu Matu'u, Donald Brighouse, Josh Tyrell, Chris Vui (captain), Piula Faasalele, TJ Ioane, Jack Lam.
Replacements: Manu Leiataua, James Lay, Hisa Sasagi, Faatiga Lemalu, Ofisa Treviranus, Melani Matavao, Rey Lee-Lo, JJ Taulagi.