The IRFU announcement yesterday of 20 redundancies from a workforce of 480 is a sobering reminder of the impact of Covid on elite sport.
The numbers in terms of financial loss have become so regular and so vast that an element of snow blindness comes in. Who can really come to terms with a €125 million loss at Manchester City or indeed the €35 million endured by Irish Rugby in 2020?
We see it at the Government level and we realise that investing tens of billions in keeping the economy afloat at national and household level has to be compensated at some point in the future but again, we prefer to look the other way and justify that it is needed and we’ll figure something out in the longer term.
Reality always bites though and it has around the IRFU Headquarters in Dublin 4 over recent weeks as the vista of another whole season without fans has become more real.
CEO Philip Browne suggested recently that a further loss of €29 million was on the cards for 2021 and that Government support and CVC investment in PRO14 Rugby and the Six Nations was being used to keep the sport alive but not in any way a silver bullet to the losses.
Rugby is in a particular bind because of the professional contracts and the costs of the professional game that have to be met on a monthly basis.
Staff including playing and coaching staff moved to a four day week and took deferrals and reduction of salaries last year but still, that was not enough and now 20 of the staff, equivalent to 7.5 per cent of the non-playing workforce is a bitter pill.
These will be difficult times with the pleasure of seeing player contracts renewed tempered by basic mathematics on how higher-earning deals take up finances that could have been used elsewhere.
They are justified in that you have to maintain a strong player base to protect the success on and off the pitch that delivers all the other jobs and aspects of the game.
The loss of JJ Hanrahan, Darren Sweetman and CJ Stander from Munster will hurt in Rugby terms but hanging on to one or all would have meant deeper cuts elsewhere.
But still, despite the fact that the numbers rarely lie, in an age where the feeling of togetherness that was evident a year ago has now fractured, it will be a rocky few months still before the ship is righted.
Sport for Business Partners
