THE chief executive of the Scottish rugby players’ association has said he is “extremely disappointed” by the way in which the SRU broke off negotiations about a programme of salary cuts after weeks of apparently cordial talks. While accepting the need for those cuts,
Bill Mitchell of Rugby Players Scotland is convinced that if the governing body had continued discussions with his organisation, his members would have a better understanding of how and why the process was being undertaken.
Mitchell’s aim when discussions began with the SRU was to try to preserve his members’ contracts as they stood. However, as it became clear that the coronavirus crisis could cost Murrayfield many millions of pounds in lost income, he agreed that cuts had to be made.
“While extremely disappointed that despite co-operating closely with the SRU we were not given the opportunity of contributing to the details of what is proposed, we acknowledge that the actions announced on Monday by the SRU represent a reasonable way to protect the long-term employment of our membership,” he said yesterday. “Along with all other national player associations RPS is very concerned about the uncertainty surrounding our sport.
“We have worked hard over the last few weeks to find ways of achieving long-term sustainability of employment for our members without impacting on incomes. However, we now acknowledge that the growing difficulty of implementing a realistic timetable for restarting global competition makes that goal impossible to achieve.”
Players will be consulted individually on the planned cuts to their salaries for the next five months. Those cuts will operate on a sliding scale, with the highest earners taking the biggest percentage cut and those earning below £50,000 not having a cut at all. All of the SRU’s playing staff, which includes the Edinburgh and Glasgow Warriors squads, are being furloughed under the UK government’s job retention scheme.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here