RFU piles pressure on World Rugby to solve Pacific Island crisis

Chief executive Tuila'epa Sailele Malielegaoi – also the nation’s Prime Minister – declared the Samoan Rugby Union bankrupt ahead of their European tour in November

England’s 48-14 victory over Samoa last month was overshadowed by the financial collapse of the visitors’ union (Getty)

World Rugby have been urged to get to the root of the rugby crisis in the Pacific Islands after the Rugby Football Union faced calls to give their match-day takings to the “bankrupt” Samoan Rugby Union ahead of last month’s autumn international, with the English governing body stressing it is not their duty to bail them out.

England’s 48-14 victory over Samoa was overshadowed by the financial collapse of the visitors’ union, with its chief executive Tuila'epa Sailele Malielegaoi – also the nation’s Prime Minister – declaring it bankrupt ahead of their European tour in November. World Rugby have disputed the bankruptcy claim and issued a statement to say that the union received a record investment of £1.5m last year, but the RFU still faced calls to give the Pacific Islanders more than the £75,000 “goodwill gesture” that they allocated for their visit to Twickenham.

That fee represents less than one per cent of the RFU’s match-day takings, with Test matches earning the governing body around £10m per game, but chief executive Steve Brown has urged World Rugby to find a resolution that will end calls for other unions to financially support teams that remain their opponents.

The RFU faced similar calls when England played Fiji in 2016, where the body also gave £75,000 to the tier-two nation, but the clear indication on Tuesday was that this current financial crisis cannot go on.

“I think the bottom line is we feel for the unions that are struggling,” Brown said. “They’re great competitors, they were great games here as you saw, they’re very committed players and very committed unions as we understand. They’re passionate about coming here and playing as well, so we really feel for the situation they find themselves in.

“We don’t know all the facts as well, that’s the other side of it, and it’s not really our business to know that. Our response to the situation was to firstly think about what we might do just purely from a player perspective, purely think about it as a player, could we support the players?

“The second thing was to put some pressure on World Rugby to help us or them to find a resolution in particular with Samoa and their situation. We understand they’ve got lots going on, it’s not our job to get involved in that, and it sits within this model of a global season and global agreement of how these things work. But we’re not comfortable with the fact that there are unions out there struggling to make ends meet, that’s not in our interest.

"We want good quality, high quality opponents here with great players and well run unions. So we don’t like that situation, and all we did was help them with a goodwill gesture that hopefully was a reasonable amount of money just from a player perspective. We can’t bail out the whole union that’s not our job to do that.”

England’s players considered donating part of their match fees to their Samoan counterparts, given the £22,000 that each one receives dwarves the £650 that is given to Samoan players per match. But a statement from the senior members of Eddie Jones’ squad ahead of the match confirmed that they would not be doing so, which was met with a similar response from the Samoans who were not keen on receiving such a charity donation and would rather the crisis is addressed once and for all.