'I'll never forget my first game back... Christ, what have I left NZ for?'

James Haskell fears more clubs in the Gallagher Premiership are going to suffer the same fate as Worcester Warriors and Wasps as “no one can make a decision” to initiate any change.

Worcester and Wasps have both been suspended by the Premiership over the last month after going into administration, and with concerns mounting that other sides in league are in a similar financial state, Haskell is part of a growing number of people calling for changes to be made to English rugby’s structure.

The former flanker helped launch the RFU’s ‘Play Together, Stay Together’ campaign this week, which encourages as many players as possible back to rugby after Covid. The RFU, alongside The Good, The Bad & The Rugby, hosted a Haskell XV versus Tindall XV match on Thursday using ‘Game On’ rules, with an array of former internationals on either side.

Haskell, who was coaching his side, spoke to RugbyPass before the match, where he discussed his former club Wasps, his time at the club and the future of the Premiership.

With 167 members of staff made redundant this week, including plenty of his former teammates, the Premiership winner suggested special dispensations should be made this season to ensure players are without a club.

“I spoke to Joe Launchbury and he’s like everybody, devastated,” the 37-year-old said. “I think it’s kind of the shock in regards to what do these players do now? The salary cap has been reduced, where do the players go? I think there’s got to be a look into maybe some of these guys sitting outside the salary cap for this season to get them some game time, and then restructure next year. Because there just isn’t the space to pay a lot of the guys who have obviously got mortgages and families. You’ve got Jack Willis in the England squad and he’s got no club.

“I don’t know in Wasps’ case how they managed for it to happen like that – they had a perfectly good stadium, with a vehicle for conferencing and music and somehow they managed to do it. They created that ridiculous, stupid bond and that’s blown the whole thing up really.”

The 77-cap flanker had two stints at Wasps, with his second ending in bitter fashion in 2018 after a string of broken promises from owner Derek Richardson following their move to Coventry, which culminated in a candid confrontation between the pair weeks before Haskell left for Northampton Saints. Some of those promises did get fulfilled once he had left, which has now led to a “nightmare” situation.

“As I said in my book, What a Flanker, they didn’t make an offer as the owner got very upset when I told him all the problems,” he said.

“Obviously, as it’s documented, I had to take the team on strike while I was playing because boys weren’t getting paid, generators were running out of fuel, we were in some of the worst training facilities for a professional team, all the cars got broken into every away game, just a catalogue of stuff over and over and over again. We just weren’t listened to. And I told it to him and he just didn’t want to listen and ultimately that’s why we had to take drastic measures.

“They were talking about building this training facility for seven years, signing players off the back of doing it and just never built it, never did anything they were supposed to apart from in the last year-and-a-half, which is a nightmare because now a Championship side is going to have the best training facilities the world has ever seen.”

Despite his unpleasant departure from Wasps, Haskell refrained from twisting the knife amid the criticism directed at Richardson at the moment, saying he initially “saved the day.” Even during his trophy-laden first spell at Wasps between 2002 and 2009, Haskell said in his book that the club’s finances seemed “precarious.” When he returned in 2012, the two-time European champions had only just staved off going into administration after being bailed out by a consortium. Richardson became the principal shareholder a year later, but Haskell feels some grave errors were made later on.

“The writing was on the wall for a long time for Wasps,” he said. “I wouldn’t have said that it was going to go down the pan in such a drastic way. But in my two different stints, it was going into administration before and it was saved through a set of really hooky deals and its delaying and procrastination actually saved the club because then Derek Richardson came in and saved the day. Derek went from hero to zero really. If it wasn’t for him the club would have died, it would have gone into administration before. But the writing was always on the wall.

“I’ll never forget my first game back for Wasps, the sponsors’ dinner was four or five tables at a Holiday Inn in Marlow with the prizes an out-of-date shirt, from three years ago, and a slightly damaged box of Rebellion Mutiny beer. That was the extent of the sponsors’ evening and I thought ‘Christ, what have I left New Zealand for?’ Derek came in and saved the day and bought us this fantastic multi-purpose facility with conferencing and music and all these bits and pieces, which should have kept this tided over, as that is the only way rugby clubs are going to survive now. But then, like every man in business, or lots of in rugby, he tried to be clever and they set this bond up and I think obviously it was a way to get money back out the club and refinance, but that’s ultimately what blew the whole thing up. I might be wrong, there might be other reasons for that, but I’m pretty sure the £35 million bond that can’t be refinanced would have been the death knell.”

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With two sides already gone from the Premiership this season after only six rounds, Haskell fears more will follow in the near future, which is why urgent changes need to be made to the entire structure in England. One idea that is certainly gaining traction at the moment is central contracts of England players, something that the 2017 British & Irish Lions tourist is in favour of.

Having gained a taste of a variety of different leagues and structures during his playing career, representing Stade Francais in the Top 14, the Ricoh Black Rams in Japan and the Highlanders in Super Rugby, Haskell has first hand experience of the franchise system in New Zealand, which he feels England could copy.

“I think it’s a good idea if you could set up franchises,” he said. “At the moment rugby needs to change because it needs to be sustainable. It needs to become an entertainment business like the NFL, which is a great model for that. I think we need a central controller, central contracts with someone in charge. We need everything to feed into making a really strong union side, a really strong Premiership, we need to focus on derbies, we need to get rid of all these tournaments that no one cares about. Have the European tournament or the Premiership, or make just one league- France, England and Ireland, whatever, put something together that makes perfect sense. But unfortunately, no one can make a decision, no one can do anything. It’s a shame because I think what will happen is, change will be forced like it is at the moment. But I think more clubs are going to go.

“The problem with the Premiership is you’ve got twelve owners, or however many owners it is, that are all self-interested, and it’s not very clear who’s in charge, and I think that means the England team suffers because of that. I think the franchise model in New Zealand is good and works very well. Obviously, you’re talking very different sums of money, but Aaron Smith at the Highlanders is an example. The maximum I think his franchise would pay was $250k and then NZR then pick up the other half of your contract. It means you get control, you get better the holidays, you get looked after better.”