By Harley Quin
March 28 2011

For the sixth and final time Mark Evans talks to Harley Quin about various things Harlequin. The conversation took place just hours before the home game with Gloucester – Mark’s final home game as Chief Executive of the team. Inevitably the past, as well as the future, came under the spotlight………

HQ: Well Mark, looking back to when you first arrived at Quins in the summer of 2000 I think you inherited just seven players under contract. Did you know that was going to be the case? Were there other things that surprised you when you joined the Club?

ME: I did know! The whole thing was in abeyance really. It had been a pretty awful end to the previous season – 3 fifty point defeats in a row, a lot of uncertainty about who was staying and who was going. It was a challenge, but it wasn’t a surprise!

HQ: Still looking back on your decade at the helm are you surprised by all the changes you have made at the Club, both on and off the field?

ME: No, not really. I think the Club had to re-find itself is the best way to describe it – and not do it in a way that had been successful in the late 80s and early 90s, because that wasn’t going to work any more.

It needed a new way, that didn’t turn its back on the history and traditions but re-configured them. I have been asked the question: “What are you most proud of?” It’s probably the culture shift that I’m most proud of. The way we perceive ourselves and then the way others have come to perceive us from the outside has undergone a significant change. That’s the thing that I derive most satisfaction from.

HQ: In retrospect, would you change anything you did?

ME: Yes, of course! Gosh it would be extraordinary if you looked back over 11 years in this sort of job and said ‘I didn’t make any mistakes’. Hindsight is wonderful. Would you do things certain things differently – yes - but overall, looking at the whole holistic view, I don’t think so - no.

It keeps coming back to the things that we have talked about before. It’s about a big crowd in a big stadium, with a lot of home grown players and doing that while at the same time being self sustaining.

That is a really difficult thing to pull off and we haven’t quite done it yet, but we have made big strides. Do I think the strategic direction was sound? Yes I do. Do I wish we had spent a bit more money in years 4 and 5? Maybe, but only because it would have accelerated our development in years 6 and 7. To drop down for a year slowed everything down.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have done the three roles that 5^th year. I had done it in years 3 and 4 and in my first four years we had gone 11, 9, 7, 6 and won a couple of trophies, albeit minor ones. However, it was already getting bigger. Looking back, I probably should have brought somebody in a year earlier than I bought Dean in. I suppose I thought that I could get us through to the upgraded stadium, in the premiership, on a low playing budget – as we had done in the four previous years.

We should have handled the Bloodgate thing better, so yeah of course I’ve made mistakes but I think it’s hard to argue that strategically we haven’t moved in the right direction. Harlequins are very consistent in its approach. We haven’t deviated much in what we are trying to do.

You look around and see teams that have spent heavily on players and not been able to sustain it, raised everybody’s expectations and then dashed them.

There are various theories about building clubs. Some people (I’m not one of them) think its all about a winning team. I’m not denying that it helps, but in and of itself it’s not sufficient. Nor do I think, if you’ve got other things working in your favour, is it necessary to have a winning team to build a club.

I think it might be in weaker markets. I can see for example why Sale felt they needed a ‘rock star’ squad, which they did have for 3 or 4 years. They work in a much more difficult market than we do, in a whole host of areas. They are sitting in a region with 8 Premiership football clubs, three of the biggest RL clubs in the country, in a stadium that isn’t as well appointed as ours. They won one premiership. I remember looking at their side, maybe 3 years in a row, thinking that they had the best squad in the league. However, it couldn’t be sustained.

We don’t do that. If you want to make a football analogy, then the side I admire the most is Arsenal (and I am a Tottenham fan!) From a business/sports development point of view I think what Arsenal are doing is just incredibly impressive. Except for clubs who have access to funding which is out of all proportion to their revenue, Chelsea, Man City spring to mind, they are going to be by far the most powerful football club in England for decades. People say they haven’t won anything for a long time. They will, it’s only a matter of time. They have everything in place and they are going to be a financial powerhouse of their own making. There is no ‘financial doping’ at Arsenal.

You look at Leicester, Northampton as clubs you strive to emulate. They are the type of model you are trying to get to rather than say Saracens, perhaps Bath in the next couple of years, who are owned by people who make no secret of the fact that they don’t expect to make any money, they want to win. That’s not us and I don’t make any apologies for that. I won’t accept comparison with teams that are prepared to make massive operational losses.

I don’t want to be too ‘holier than thou’ about it. We are still massively reliant on funding, not so much from an operational side – although we do need some because we are not making operational profits, but we have debt that has to be serviced and repaid for the assets that we have built. That is a slightly different scenario, but it still requires cash that couldn’t be generated from the Club’s own revenue streams. However, it may take a few years yet, but at some point that will come to an end. 

Two phrases that will always be guaranteed to drive me nuts are: ‘X club lacks ambition’ and ‘Y needs to put his hand in his pocket and invest’. What people usually mean by that is can we please buy 6 more world class players and win the league. It’s a model that has been tried in rugby and requires a group or somebody to be comfortable with a model that requires funding to sustain it indefinitely.

That is not what we are trying to do here. We are trying to grow and be competitive. We are trying to win things every year – you don’t get involved in sport if you don’t want to win. People say it’s just about winning. I take exception to that. I don’t think it is just about winning if the only way you can do that is to rely on continued subsidy.

Ideally, I’d love to see a league in England in which the spend on the playing squad was virtually identical across all the teams, with a tight salary cap band having a very small differential between floor and ceiling. Then it would be about what sport ought to be about. Who’s got the best coach, who’s got the best tactics, spirit, and attitude? That’s not a romantic notion, it’s because I genuinely believe that is how you create value.

I know that people get frustrated and say that we are always a team that’s developing or in transition but I think that misses the point. For the first 5 years we were using a completely new approach. We took a decision to keep our spending at a level that was sensible, that we thought was just enough to keep us competitive and then go to financial institutions to make a case to fund the build (of the new West Stand).

Unfortunately we went down that year but in years 7. 8, 9 we came back and went 7^th, 6^th, 2^nd (I thought we over-achieved that year if I’m honest). Now where ought we to be? I’d say that a reasonable finish for Harlequins currently (taking into account injuries and luck, which do play a part in the short term) is somewhere between 4^th and 8^th.

Our league attendances have grown 8% this year in a market that is shrinking. That is a pretty good effort. A lot of hard work from a lot of people. If we can keep doing that it creates more revenue and then you have a decision to make about whether we use that to move towards operational breakeven.

We can’t really put anymore into the team – we spend to the Cap. We will not break it, we believe in it. What other people may or may not do I’m not going to comment on, but we spend to the wage cap to within a few £’000s. Unless you think Conor is a particularly poor negotiator or judge of talent, which I don’t think he is, the squad we have got is about what you get in this market if you spend to the Cap.

Most of the extra money we have put in during the last couple of years has been on playing support. More coaches, physios, analysts, improved training facilities, more medical provision etc. In fact now the support budget is up to 50% of the playing budget. So, you are talking about a budget in excess of £6 million on playing and I really do get irritated when that is described as lacking ambition! 10 years ago we were spending under £3 million. We have been able to finance that whilst still reducing our operational loss.

We made the decision when we came back from Division 1 that we would spend to the wage cap, whatever that is. We don’t think the wage cap should go up, but if it does we will spend to the new cap – that is our position at the moment. We think that increasing the Cap would be madness, for all sorts of reasons that we have gone into before.

Next year we have something called an ‘Academy Credit’, which I think is a good thing, even though it increases the overall spend – which I think is a bad thing! Basically, if you have a player in your squad who is home grown and under 24 the first £30,000 of his pay is not counted in the Wage Cap. You can do that up to £240,000 and we will, so our Wage cap next year will be £4.24 million because we have got 8 players who are under 24 who are in the senior squad.

So, I would say to anybody who says about the ambition thing: ‘either you are arguing that we should break the Cap, with all the potential ramifications that would have if detected or that we are not negotiating very well’. I think our players would probably smile wryly at that! The reality is that you have to make choices within the framework you are working in.

To those people who say “market forces, market forces” I say that in English rugby that doesn’t work – unless you want to be like Scottish football. There are five million people in Scotland and we are a strong, significant but essentially secondary sport in a market of 50 million people. Therefore, if you let market forces operate you will get Celtic and Rangers and anybody else that has got the necessary financial injection for a particular length of time.

 HQ: It seems to me that, as we sit here today, the prospects for Harlequins have never been better. A great stadium, the best Academy in the country, a developing fan base, the ability to put 75,000 people into a stadium to watch the team, a renewed sponsorship deal with Etihad, a new training ground etc. Given all that, why was now the right time to leave?

ME: I’m 51 and I have enjoyed this enormously. I am under no pressure at board level or ownership to leave, in fact the opposite, but I just feel that all those things that have been achieved can’t be done again and therefore I think it’s probably time. From my point of view do I want to stay for another 5-10 years and the job becomes narrower? Not really.

From the Club’s point of view I think it would benefit from somebody having a fresh look at it. I’ve been here a long time! Have I lost my enthusiasm for the job? No, but I think that somebody else now might do it better. There is still a lot to do.

I believe that if I am going to go and do something else I should do it in my early 50s, rather than mid to late 50s. That was really what drove me.

HQ: Developing the point about where Quins are as a Club, i.e. what are you going to hand on to the next Chief Executive, let’s do a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) starting with the Club’s Strengths:

ME: Strong infra-structure, good staff on and off the field, good market, with still lots of growth left in it. The brand still has things that can be done that haven’t been yet. I think the brand can be made more accessible and locally centred. We are making more strides in the next year or so to reach out to our South West London locality. Great owner, that’s a hell of a strength! Good board, strengthened in the last couple of years.

HQ: Weaknesses?

ME:  Developing fan base, with a high churn rate. It will take a generation and a bit – 20-30 years to get the level of intensity in the fan base (compared to the likes of Leicester, Gloucester, Bath etc.) It will come, but it takes time

HQ: Opportunities?

ME: There is any number. The brand, positioning in South West London, merchandise, commercial, although not huge on the commercial side. I think we are in pretty good shape in terms of sponsorship and hospitality. 2015 and the 150 Year anniversary are massive opportunities. If we can keep growing the crowd at the current rate that’s another 40% over the next 5 years. Then you are starting to talk about 15-16,000 crowds. I don’t think we will build again soon. The next stage is to get sold out on a regular basis.

HQ: Threats?

ME: There is a major threat from the structure of the league, the imbalance in the league being allowed to grow. The way that the game is perceived, the ‘brand’ of rugby and how that is grown or not grown. To me the biggest one is that the league will lose its competitiveness and become more predictable. Then we could see a number of owners saying “you know what, I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel”.

I know a lot of people do, but I don’t worry about the strength of the French clubs very much. French rugby is on a bit of a bubble at the moment and I think we have to realistic and realise that France is a bigger rugby economy than England. I don’t think the way to compete with that is to allow 2 or 3 clubs to simply try and match their spend. I think that is very short term. I think it will destroy value in the medium term. Therefore, I think you have to make the economy of club rugby in England as big as you can as a total entity, not just one or two clubs.

HQ: Given all the above, what sort of person do you think needs to replace you? What do their personal strengths need to be?

ME: I’ll take a diplomatic swerve on that!

HQ: The professional game, at the Premiership level, continues to develop at a pace. Given the recent trip to Abu Dhabi, do you envisage Quins taking a home game overseas during the season?

ME: No I don’t see it. I think it’s financially too difficult.

HQ: Do you think it is an acceptable thing to do?

ME: I think if you let people know well in advance and you adjust your season tickets accordingly I don’t see anything morally wrong with it. If you are asking me if I think it will happen, on a scale of 0-10 where 0 in never and 10 is a certainty I’d say it’s probably a ‘2’.

HQ: Is the game today really all about money? If the price is right is any game location acceptable? Taking it to its extreme, if somebody in say the Middle East paid enough money would a team take its entire home schedule out there?

ME: I don’t think that will ever happen. I can’t see a team being based outside England for any significant number of its games competing in the English Premiership. Much more likely, although still unlikely, is a rationalisation of club rugby in Europe into one entity. More likely, but I don’t think I will ever see that!

HQ: Given that Northampton are moving their Heineken Cup quarter final away from Franklins Gardens and we have had conversations in the past about ‘if Quins draw Munster in a Heineken QF etc’ , are we moving towards a possibility that there is a case for more games going across the road, even down to top league games against say Leicester?

ME: We are still a bit away from that actually.

HQ: How many people do you need at Twickenham to make it work?

ME: It depends how much you charge. It’s as simple as that, but you can certainly make 30,000 work at normal pricing. You can do the sums quite simply. You get an extra 15,000 people who are on average paying after VAT (don’t forget that 20% of all that fans pay goes to the government) £18-20 per head so you might make another £300,000 and the cost base increase is not £300,000. But its not life changing and certainly 20,000 doesn’t work.

You can only take games there when you are pretty confident that you can double the crowd and there aren’t many games like that. There really aren’t. Everybody talks about Munster and they are the only team that has any kind of mass travelling support. So we are a long way away from that happening (playing at Twickenham) on any kind of regular basis.

HQ: How close is the Stoop to needing more redevelopment (i.e. the North Stand) to increase capacity further?

ME: For us to consider building again you would have to be getting 11-12 sell-outs every year. I think even then you would do a little bit of work on the yield before you built again up to 18,000 because that last build is going to be extra-ordinarily difficult. You are going to have to move the road for a start, that is incredibly expensive and for what – another 2,500 seats? With all the build costs that’s a tricky one. I’d be amazed if the ground changed significantly in the next 5 years, I might even say 10 years.

By the way, I don’t think you will be getting adult season tickets for £99 again soon!  I think that was a great offer in a recession, it stimulated a lot of interest and bought some new people into the family. Frankly if people will only come and watch you for £5 per game, that simply isn’t a strong enough connection.

Season ticket details will be going out next week. They will still contain fantastic offers, but there won’t be any adult tickets for £99. Once you do that for more than an introductory offer people get used to it and then you have the devil’s own job to get them to pay a reasonable amount to come and watch what is a pretty high level of sport.

HQ: How will the World Cup affect next season in terms of squad strategy and recruitment?

ME: We’ll lose some players no doubt, but its one of the things you think about when you put the squad together. How many will we lose, for how long? You look at positions and try to balance it.

The top English players are going to be missing more than usual and from other countries a lot more than usual. Normally, if you have a lot of Samoans, Fijians you don’t lose them for long maybe only one or two games a season.

However, we all knew it was coming, it’s not a surprise! There are a whole host of reasons why we moved to a predominantly English squad. Most of them are to do with young player development, that’s the main driver but it would be wrong to say that there are not other drivers too.

If you have got an 80% English squad, so of say 35 players, 28 are English how many are you going to lose to England? 3,4,5 tops. Well, you can manage it. You are building in some certainty.

There are some financial advantages too with the EQP (English Qualified Players). Its one of the good things about EQP, everybody can reach it if they so choose. Whereas if you put all your funding through EPS, which is the top 32 and give all the money to the clubs that provide them you fuel inflation in the market. If you simply give clubs say £250,000 for each elite player, you have effectively put a £250,000 revenue tag on each player. The bidding for that player becomes ludicrous.

Has it introduced a single new player into the league? No. Has it therefore improved the quality of the league? No. What’s it done, its pushed up the cost base and meant that they have all congregated at four or five clubs and the clubs who produced them can’t keep them. They can’t compete on the park and players want to win things.

Also, it’s what the league should be doing. One of the functions of the English league must surely be to produce, let’s say, 300 professional English players that play regularly in the Premiership that gives Martin Johnson a pool of players bigger than any other country in the world to pick from.

Its one of the most impressive things about Conor’s strategy and Dean before him. This group of players has been growing together and being added to from below for a number of years. How many young players have left? David, purely through the wage cap.

People go on about recruitment, half the trick is in retention. When they do the ‘ins and outs’ for each club I think there should be a third column ‘re-signed’ because I think that is equally important. It gives stability.

Now sometimes you can bring fresh blood in. Ideally, if you can, you’d like to do that from below. This year it was Joe Marler; last year it was George Lowe.  Who will it be next year? If you can do that every year, not just every other year or every third year, you are freshening the squad up from within. You do have to bring people in, of course you do and you can’t get obsessive about signing English players. We signed Nick Evans who is a world class player.

HQ: Is that how you finish it off – bringing in one or two star players like Nick Evans to bring out the best in the people around them?

ME: That’s an interesting point. There are equally lots of examples of ‘star’ players brought in to teams having little or no effect! Do you need a number of top class players? Yes of course you do. Nick Evans is a top class player so are Nick Easter and Danny Care. I think Ugo Monye has been, he’s in a bit of a trough at the moment, but has been and will be again a top class player. I think Mike Brown is too. He is so consistent every week. He so rarely has a bad game. I think George Lowe, Joe Marler and one or two others are going to be top class players too.

Can you be Toulouse? Can you have 30 top class players? Under the Wage Cap in England, the answer is no. Can you have the depth of Leinster or Munster? The answer is the same – no. That is where we are. Our job, within those parameters, is to get the very highest quality squad we possibly can in those 34, 35, 36 players. Without either breaking the salary cap, or have such a thin squad that your top 15 is fantastic but your next 15 are really poor, I think that the way we are doing it is the only way you possibly can.

You are always also looking for the odd, absolute ‘blinding’ value signing. The Mike Ross type signing. In his first year here he was on very low wages because he was playing amateur rugby in Cork. He isn’t on that now!

You know you will only be able to keep them for a year or two at that level, because they make the first team, everybody sees that the market has massively undervalued them by either missing them or they got injured or they were a late developer. Nick Easter. I signed him myself on a 3 month trial for ‘buttons’. He’s now one of our highest paid players – and quite rightly so. If you can get one or two of them in your squad every year it gives you an advantage under the Cap. If you can get one or two ‘bolters’ out of your Academy who get into the first team and play for 20 games before you have to tear up their contract and redo it that’s what building a squad is all about.

The best signings are always the ones that you get for a very low price that have a huge impact. Those sorts of signings are harder to get now though due to technology and the awareness of players across the world gets stronger and stronger every year, but they are still there! Tomas Vallejos playing semi-pro in Italy. Great signing, terrific signing.  

HQ: Thanks Mark. On a personal level I would like to thank you for taking the time to do these interviews for ComeAllWithin over the last six years.

ME: It’s genuinely been really, really enjoyable. I hope it continues with my successor. Everybody has their own style but one of the things we talked about was changing the culture to make the Club more accessible. As the Club gets bigger that becomes much more difficult. I remember in the early days that you could virtually wander through the old West Stand on a match day with 2-2500 people and you did nearly know the crowd by name! With the best will in the world you cant keep being that ‘physically accessible’. It’s too big now. 14,000 tickets sold for today. So, doing things like this and having it as an archive for people to refer to and to have the opportunity to put certain misconceptions straight and to provide some factual information, without breaking any confidentiality, is a really good thing to be able to do.