England players will have their match fees cut by almost £6,000 from this autumn as part of a new pay deal with the Rugby Football Union.
With the union facing huge losses due to the coronavirus pandemic, revised terms have been agreed under which Eddie Jones’s squad will be paid £17,250 per match – a reduction of £5,750. As revealed by the Guardian in April, the RFU was seeking to reduce players’ fees with the previous deal coming to an end over the summer. The union is forecasting losses of up to £107m on top of the £15m hit already taken due to the pandemic.
The cuts are in line with the 25% reductions accepted by RFU executives as well as Jones and his coaching staff. Across the organisation the RFU has proposed 139 redundancies, including 12% of Jones’s staff.
The union has previously conceded that the elite men’s programme will not be immune from the cuts and as reported by the Guardian last week, Jones will be denied the chance to put his players through their paces at their warm-weather training base in Portugal before the autumn campaign. Despite agreeing to a 25% cut, however, Owen Farrell and his teammates remain the best-paid international players in the world.
