Steele Puts Rugby at Heart of RFU Business
By Dave Barton & Peter Thomas
JOHN STEELE started as the RFU’s Chief Executive on September 6th, vowing to put rugby ‘at the heart of the union’s business.’
The former Chief Executive of UK Sport said: “This is a huge day for me. It really doesn’t get any better. I have had a lifetime in rugby, right back to my mini rugby days in Cambridge, and I have a massive passion and, I believe, empathy for the sport.
“As a union we have one goal and that is to develop the game at all levels across the country. To do this we need to put rugby at the heart of everything we do. The RFU is here to serve and lead rugby and we will continue to build on firm foundations.
“The business is on a sound financial footing, which is a massive credit to my predecessor Francis Baron. But we are not a FTSE 100 company. We have invested £110m in grassroots rugby since 2003 and we need to make sure that we continue to invest in the right way to put rugby at the core of our organisation.”
RFU Chairman Martyn Thomas and Steele will be visiting grassroots clubs around the country to meet the 50,000 volunteers in the sport and he promised: “We will be talking to everybody to discover what we are good at, what we can do better, how we can work better with our partners in the interests of rugby.
“These are hugely exciting times for sport in the UK. Saturday was my first day back in rugby. I watched the Premiership double header at Twickenham and the Women’s World Cup final on Sunday. I had forgotten about the amount of good things going on, among them how the women’s game has changed in the last five years to become something very, very special.”
Steele, a former Northampton fly-half who became the Saints Director of Rugby and then Executive Director, is looking forward to the 2015 Rugby World Cup as a unique opportunity for English rugby, saying: “2015 and a home World Cup in the sport I am passionate about is something very, very special for the business and the whole rugby family. It is a means for us to grow and develop the game at all levels and a focus all our combined efforts on delivering the best tournament ever.
“In terms of 2015 we are still in the planning stage but already we know that it will give us all a once in a lifetime opportunity to get players into the game. We want to work closely everyone in the game to ensure that we are all ready to develop a joined up legacy programme that brings news players into our clubs for the long term and which will help them become even more sustainable over the next decade and beyond.
Community Game Board Builds on First Year
Rob Udwin, CGB Chairman
At the start of its second season, the RFU’s Community Game Board (CGB) has achieved a good deal and is intent now on building on the foundations established.
Over the months there has been a determination to put clubs at the centre of everything that the Community Game Board wants to achieve and a recognition that only in partnership can the RFU and its CBs and clubs protect, develop and grow the game.
Clearly, any new initiative takes time to get established and I am most grateful for the way the vision established two years ago has benefitted from the support of the RFU Council, CBs, clubs, and the paid and volunteer workforce. Our schools and universities have also been an important part of the whole process.
In the Board’s first year we repositioned the Rugby Development Officers as a club-facing workforce and equalised their geographical and workload responsibilities. This we anticipate will have a very positive impact in the new season.
The Regional Rugby Managers have become the prime point of contact for Constituent Bodies and, with a more robust role established in managing their RDOs and other staff on their patch, they also have a single management line, reporting to the newly-appointed Head of Club & CB Services, Jez Allman.
We have made a good start on putting in place Planning, Funding and Reporting processes with our CBs which will ensure a more focussed, accountable and bottom-up approach to managing the game at a local level.
The fact that all 28 county CBs have signed up to the pilot will certainly expedite this process and I am most appreciative of their support which speaks of real and positive partnership in achieving the kind of progress we all want.
This new mechanism should rationalise and unify the various funding sources for CBs and give them the ability to plan development for them and their clubs and to bid for RFU funding in a manageable way, with help from the Regional Rugby Managers, RDOs and club and CB volunteers.
I believe that the quality and amount of work the Community Game Board and our clubs, schools, universities, CBs and paid and volunteer workforce has achieved in the first year is a record to be proud of. The work is by no means finished but we have got off to a flying start.
In this our second season there will be very much a bottom up approach and a move away from traditional target-driven systems to more effective ways of performance management.
It was more than a decade ago and appropriate for that time that, with a recognition of the difficulties facing community rugby clubs, a set of initiatives entitled Blackman Action was established. Three successive RFU Strategic Plans also set a large number of targets for the game. But with new times comes new imperatives and a recognition that community rugby can best benefit from a bottom up rather than a top down approach. The RFU is determined to deliver the environment and resources that clubs tell us they require and I believe we can together best create sustainable clubs and grow the game we all love.
I am grateful for the support and expertise that our CBs and clubs have brought to the process and believe that the Community Game Board’s job is to listen, to help them solve problems, and to help them to help themselves to succeed.
Realising a vision is, of course, more difficult than defining it but a very positive step change is, I believe, being made.