By Monkey1
June 28 2014

  It was all just too predictable. The England football team sent home without a win and without getting beyond stage one. How has it come to this, and what can we learn from this as a group of rugby supporters?  

We could all see it coming. Even as they settled into their hotel in Brazil, the cover of Private Eye showed a photograph of the England team getting off the plane, a caption from the pilot asking “Should I keep the engines running?” What I know about football you could write on the head of a pin using a large axe, but even I could tell it was going to be a debacle. Football may not be my game, but it does seem to be the nation’s game, and the nation expected pretty much nothing.

So what is the problem?

Well it certainly doesn’t help that the top tier football clubs are largely owned and managed by foreigners, have little loyalty to the country, and stuff their teams with foreign players. Money rules, and when that happens the clubs prefer to buy in proven talent from abroad, rather than give a chance to developing home-grown players. The egos that rule the game love to be seen spending zillions of pounds on a player with an unintelligible name, they have little interest in John Clark from Wakefield aged 20 who might turn out to be a future good player. The focus of top tier club football is all in the wrong direction as far as the national team is concerned.

It is also possible that the pool of talent in this country is rapidly shrinking too. Not so very long ago before Playstations and the internet, millions of boys would finish school every day, and as long as the rain wasn’t hammering down they would meet up with their mates & kick a ball about. Jumpers for goalposts were the must-have toy, and as a result those boys developed superb ball skills from an early age. Now too many of them play indoors, they play alone, and a ball is merely an image on an LCD screen that requires fingers rather than feet to score a goal.

As football clubs distance themselves ever further from their supporters, the next generation just doesn’t have the same love of the game that their parents had. They are less likely to kick a ball up the street, dreaming of the crowd cheering them on to score the winning goal for their beloved team. The next David Beckham, Alan Shearer or Bobby Charlton could be out there, but if he is stuck indoors instead of kicking a ball about at every opportunity we will never find out.

So how about rugby? Well the game has already started to head in the same direction across the water in France. The top clubs are spending money in obscene amounts to buy the best players from abroad, and that means local players are being displaced and are not getting the game time that is essential for developing international quality players. The core of the French team is starting to look a bit tired, and you have to wonder how they are going to bring in replacements for those who retire if the clubs are not giving enough home-grown players a chance. The top French clubs are only interested in themselves, and only interested in this season. The future is something they will buy with next season’s generous budget, and the national team is not their concern.

Over here we thankfully have two weapons to fight off this disease, English Qualified Player (EQP) incentives and the good old salary cap. The salary cap is the big deterrent, we cannot compete with the French money men and stuff our clubs with top internationals to the same extent. That in itself does a lot to favour EQP players as it levels out the financial playing field. Then the RFU wisely declares that because a large wedge of the TV money comes from the national team, then distributing those spoils amongst the top clubs should reflect their contribution to the national game. You do more for England, and England will do more for you.

Already however we hear worrying comments from at least one of the big wealthy clubs, about how the salary cap prevents them from competing in Europe. Is it just a matter of time before they try to have the salary cap scrapped under some obscure Eurolegal cobblers? That would be the beginning of the rot, and the national game could be weakened considerably as a result of the selfish desires of one club.

The next target under some sort of anti-competition law would be EQP incentives. I am sure it wouldn’t be difficult to argue that these are in breach of equal opportunities between EU nations and therefore illegal. That however does not mean that the incentives are not morally correct. They are there for a reason, and a very good reason it is too.

The current rules are certainly effective, as the clubs in the Championship and Premiership have a good mix of foreign and English players, and are very much aware of their obligations to the national team. These two leagues are doing an excellent job of finding & developing the players who will be the future of English rugby. This goes down well with the supporters, and the recent moves to bring our Academy back into the heart of our club have been warmly welcomed.

Another important factor is that the top English clubs are largely owned and managed by English enthusiasts. A substantial number of the managers and coaches in the Premiership and Championship are themselves former English players. The same applies in Ireland and Wales, and perhaps the malaise affecting Scottish Rugby can be partly explained by the number of foreign managers and coaches at the top level, people who are not Scottish right down to the marrow.

At the other end of the scale from the top professional clubs are the small local clubs across the country. My local club is Morpeth, and if you pass along Mitford Road any weekend during the season you will see juniors spread across several pitches, from ankle biters to big strapping teenagers, chucking themselves into the game under the supervision of the heroes of the rugby world, the junior coaching teams. These volunteers are keeping the game in excellent health for the next generation, and top marks to the RFU for supporting the game at this level. The last figures I saw for participation in junior rugby showed the grass roots of the game to be flourishing.

The present looks good for rugby in England, and this is reflected in the national team who are competitive at the very highest level, and if all comes together on the day they should be able to hold their heads up high during next year’s World Cup. The future however depends on the top clubs respecting the balancing act that is in play between the aspirations of individual clubs, and the aspirations of the nation. If that balance is upset then the England Rugby team of the future could become as powerless as their football counterparts.

So what can be done to rescue English football? Well basically they need UKIP to be put in charge. I don’t do politics at all but even I get scared by the thought of UKIP being in charge of this country. Put them in charge of English football however and that is a different story. They would put England first on every agenda, and that is what has been missing for too long.

I am not seriously suggesting that we need a bunch of politicians in charge of football, but we do need people in charge who are passionate about this country. In time this would revive the fortunes of the national team, maybe even enough to grab the attentions of millions of boys again as it used to. They might even put down their Playstations, go & dig out Grandad’s jumpers to make some goalposts, and start kicking a football around.

Football would come home.