Having run champion clubs in both union and league, Mark Evans – the former CEO of Saracens, Harlequins, Melbourne Storm and Global Rapid Rugby – has collaborated with writer Michael Aylwin to produce Unholy Union, a book that examines the foundations of rugby. As the Super League season reaches its climax and the Premiership gets going, we asked the consultant how the two leagues, and codes, are faring.

‘And suddenly anything seems possible.’ That’s the opening line of Unholy Union. How different will rugby look post-Covid? “I thought Covid would accelerate a lot of changes and that hasn’t happened yet, but that’s reflected in society. We seem to have gone into a pause mode. An awful lot of debt has been occurred and deferred. Clubs have been effectively bailed out by the government and, although it’s low-interest, it’s still debt for organisations that are already debt-heavy. That’s allowed both codes to put off changes that they need to make because it wasn’t quite as disastrous as most thought.”

In the book you say Premiership clubs need to either reduce their wage bills by half or increase their revenue by a quarter. Why is English rugby union so reluctant to control players’ wages? “It’s not just the players. Yes, their wages have gone up enormously but so have coaches, administrators – who are paid a lot more now to run loss-making clubs than they were to run solvent ones – and agents. That’s four quite powerful groups for whom it’s been a terrific 25 years – off the back of other people’s money. You could argue that’s the way the free market works, but it worries me whether that can go on for another 25 years. Maybe it can, but my argument would be it hasn’t grown very much. The Premiership business model is broken and for some reason they don’t want to fix it. Some very rich guys just keep pumping millions in every year until one gets fed up, then another one emerges.”

You say that ‘the further we venture into the professional era the more the case for continuing with an open system weakens,’ but Sky supposedly insists on relegation in Super League because viewers like it. “I’ve heard this, but show me the data. Where does it say more people watch poor teams? In lots of seasons there isn’t a relegation battle anyway. Leigh hardly won a game this year. Any new club has to add value. I don’t think Ealing would add value to the Premiership. If you suggested that in many other countries they’d look at you as if you were mad. You’ve got to grow your market. It’s not dissimilar to Super League adding Leigh.”

Super League is considering changing to a 10+10 format and the Premiership has postponed relegation, but does restructuring solve anything? “You can’t answer that on its own. Rugby league obsesses about the number of teams, and union obsesses about promotion and relegation. But that, in itself, is not a panacea. You can’t talk about the number of teams without talking about the number of games, franchises, promotion and relegation, squad size and salary cap. League and union are both guilty of having huge debates about single issues when no single issue is going to get you to where you want to be. Both codes play too many games. We’ve embraced play-offs so there’s no need to play everyone twice. In English rugby league they play the same teams too often. Oh look, it’s Warrington against Wigan … again! Clubs know they make a bit more money having more games, but that just diverts your attention from the real problems.”

Attendances have doubled in league and trebled in union, but both have flatlined. Can rugby grow to fill major stadiums? “They could. All sports have the potential to grow if they are well led and each element support each other and are not contradictory. But if you’re spending a disproportionate percentage of your revenue on the playing department, you have nothing left to invest in growth. You’re just keeping the lights on. If you rely on your professional teams to do your development work and don’t have any money to do it, you are in serious trouble. We all tend to go and watch the games we played, so if your participation numbers seriously diminish, like in Australian rugby union, over a 20-30 year period your audience disappears. And if that happens, you’re toast.”

Has rugby league made the most of its clubs in major population bases? “The region where rugby league has a presence has about 10 million people. It’s twice the size of Scotland. It’s Portugal or Sweden: not to be dismissed. But why spend any time worrying about your national reach when you have so much of the north to conquer? Fish where the fishes are. I’ve never quite understood why English rugby league didn’t look to fill in the gaps in areas where it was known. Rugby league is equal to football in Leeds and Hull, where it’s on the back page of the paper. That’s as good as you’re going to get in a city. But look at all those places between Manchester and Leeds – Rochdale, Oldham, Calderdale, Huddersfield – they all have about a quarter of a million people. That’s a million people with a cultural understanding of the sport and yet it’s been allowed to wither.”

You ran three clubs that grew to become giants. Can it be done anywhere? “It wasn’t all down to me. I happened to be there! Sometimes there’s an empty market and, if the game has some resonance in the broader nation, that’s worth a look. For example, the West Country is historically union’s strongest area and football isn’t as strong there. So the rise of Exeter could easily have been Plymouth or even Cornwall: there was always room for a far south-west team at the highest level. Then there’s the clubs in a very strong market that have never been able to exploit it: Leinster Rugby in Dublin is the classic example, or my old club Harlequins. They were sitting on a really strong rugby culture but with no fans. Melbourne was unusual because News Corporation pumped in about £80m and still couldn’t make it work profitably, but they did create a fanbase and a successful team. We came along and helped turn it into a half-decent business and benefited from all the money they had put in. We could not have done that from scratch without a lot of money.”

You say that ‘if you are the third-choice code of football, don’t bother’. Yet rugby league keeps trying in places such as London, Wales, Oxford and Toronto. “The idea you can parachute a sport into an area that has no cultural and historical roots is nonsense. It’s going to take 50 years and a lot of money to touch the sides. It is extraordinarily difficult.”

Union is adopting two more rules from league. Where is this heading? “All the football codes are taking things from each other; it’s not just union from league. They are all striving for the same goal: to be as entertaining as possible and remain a balance between attack and defence. It’s about the rhythm and flow. You know when your game has it and when it hasn’t. Way back, rugby league got rid of unlimited tackles because it was too weighted in favour of the side in possession. If you never lose the ball going into a ruck, it can get quite turgid. There’s got to be a way to get the ball back! With so many phases, union may be facing its unlimited tackle moment.”

You brought in shot clocks, no kicks to touch, shorter games, while some Lions Tests went on for two hours. “The Premiership semi-finals were thrilling and they were played under the same rules as the Lions Tests. So it’s not the laws. You can change the framework. Look at injuries, water-boys, number of substitutions, TMO – let’s start there. Union has too many players – 23, and they all come on – and substitutions take too long. Just rotate them, like in league. And we’re going to the video ref for everything and taking an awfully long time. We’re spending too long trying to achieve the unachievable. We spend way too long treating injuries and it’s wide open for gamesmanship. And I’d get rid of water boys. You can give water when you’re behind the sticks or when there’s a penalty. We all know why they’re on and what they’re doing: Neil Jenkins and Alfie Langer have been doing it for years.”


You call sevens a ‘friendly entry point into rugby’. Given the success of the USA, Kenya, Spain and Russia teams, could it be rugby’s gateway to the rest of the world? “Sevens has hit a commercial brick wall. It’s taken years to get a 10-venue circuit – a hell of an achievement – with very strong sponsorship and generally strong crowds. But it loses money as its incredibly expensive. Sevens is so demanding you need recovery – but you can’t show three days on TV. And you can’t just show the finals as that’s not enough content. A lot of clever people are trying to figure out a way to make a television product out of Sevens. A lot of unions are asking ‘why are we doing this?’ For a developing nation it’s much cheaper, as all you do is get a squad together – all the other costs are paid for you. So it’s the entry point, but the cost-base is so high it’s difficult to make it work.”