Players need to know truth about cuts

IF I WAS still playing I’d be equally alarmed and concerned at having to take a 25 per cent pay cut as the current professionals are in Wales. We are too often guilty of overinflating the salaries of our elite sportsmen and claiming they aren’t worth the money.

Well, how many jobs do you know where people go to work every day and put their bodies on the line? One bad injury and it can be a case of life or death, lower down the scale it can mean an end to your livelihood.

Players have mortgages to pay, families to fund and all the usual expenses to meet. The ones who earn the biggest salaries have worked incredibly hard to do so and only have a few years on top whack.

If you want to know the difference in pay scale between a top flight rugby player and footballer then just examine the fortunes of former Whitchurch High School classmates Gareth Bale and Sam Warburton. Gareth earned as much in a week as Sam made in a year at one stage – and earned a fortune from the biggest transfer in the history of the game when he went to Real Madrid.

I don’t care who you are, or how much money you are earning, losing a quarter of it is going to hurt. And the longer it goes on the worse it is going to get.

So, my message to the Regions and the WRU is a simple one. Don’t throw the players under the bus, take them into your confidence and ensure there is real transparency between what is going on in the board room and the pitch.

The players deserve to know more about the real circumstances surrounding their profession. They’ve already agreed to a three-month pay cut and shown their willingness to support their paymasters.

They deserve to know the full extent of any financial problems that are going to have a potentially devastating effect on their lives and those closest to them. They aren’t the only problem, they are the one of the biggest parts of the solution.