'Central contracts' plan for England players dealt crushing blow

England rugby chief Stephen Brown today killed off any idea of central contracts for Eddie Jones’s players and admitted the earliest they could contemplate following New Zealand and Ireland’s lead is 2024.

With debate raging around the amount of control England have over their players following the woeful fifth place finish in the Six Nations championship, moving to central contracts appears to be one solution that has worked for other major nations.

However, the primacy of contract in English rugby is between the players and the Premiership clubs who are 18 months into their eight year deal which takes in another World Cup cycle after Japan next year.

Brown, the Rugby Football Union’s chief executive, made his stance crystal clear today as he handed Jones a vote of confidence and insisted there would be no “knee jerk” reaction to three successive defeats for England in the Six Nations.

Brown admitted: “I am not saying the clubs will rip up the agreement and give the RFU control of the players. My point is that we have a “version” and there is an agreement in place for eight years and there is no will on either side to change that agreement.

“We have had this agreement running for 18 months and is the second eight year cycle and it has been working extremely well. You need to be very careful to make any changes if you could. We have an agreement that has built the strongest relationship with the clubs in recent years and there is great collaboration there were both club and country work together. We want to players and clubs to do well and need the country to well and it might be a knee-jerk if you were to try a different solution.

“People talk about central contracts in very binary terms but what we have in reality is a hybrid with an element of central contract when they come into camp with England. We need to let this agreement play out to the World Cup and that is what is set up to do and it continues for another four years. The World Cup will be a very good test of its success. “

Brown defended his decision to extend Jones’s contract to 2021 and insisted the deal would stay in in place. He said: “Eddie and his coaches have my confidence and maybe the results mean that we were not quite as good as our results were showing before but we are not as bad as fifth in the Six Nations and that is an important point. These are the moment when you don’t knee jerk without the evidence and data. We are not knee jerking and we will bounce back and I know that this is not a place Eddie wants to be in.

“The results in the Six Nations were not what we wanted, not what we expected and there is no attempt by us to dress this up. Everyone is deeply disappointed, we will learn from this and make it doesn’t happen again. The debrief has started today and it is one we do after every tournament to identify how we can move forward by learning lessons. Eddie has an 86 percent winning record with England and we don’t believe you become a bad coach or team overnight. We have hit a bit of a bump.

“I don’t agree with the view that we have been stagnating for 18 months and the key for us is focussing on 2019 to get everything in place to be in the strongest position to be capable of winning the World Cup.”