Championship chief claims there were "repeated warnings" about Reds

Wednesday 11 October 2023

A row between two senior rugby officials about the plight of Jersey Reds has stepped up.

Championship Chairman Simon Halliday has demanded a retraction from RFU Chief Executive Bill Sweeney over claims that the national governing body received no warning about the financial situation at Reds before they went bust.

Speaking to The Times, Halliday says he raised concerns about Jersey to the Professional Game Board on 21 September. That body has representatives from the RFU, Premiership and Championship.

“I have a responsibility to my clubs and to the tournament to raise these matters. I can’t have it said in the public domain that I categorically never mentioned Jersey. It is simply not true,” Halliday said.

“The Professional Game Board is the senior professional [rugby] entity in this country. I brought it up as a topic and I will be asking for a full and public admission of that fact from Bill Sweeney. Because if I don’t ask for that, people think I have made it up. I have a responsibility to Jersey and to the individuals, the people who have lost their jobs. For the CEO of the RFU to say, ‘I knew nothing, this was a bolt from the blue,’ is just not true. Do I have to extract the minutes from that meeting?”

He told the 21 September meeting that he has been contacted “a number of times by the government of Jersey who were asking a number of questions about whether it was worth continuing”.

The financial plight of Jersey Reds was laid bare before a States debate last week in which members ultimately decided not to continue putting public money into the club.

In 2020 a three year States grant totalling £450,000 was agreed to secure professional rugby in Jersey, the intention was there would be no more after that.

In 2021 Jersey agreed a loan guarantee for 80% of a £500,000 loan to Reds from Santander International.

This year the States agreed to allowed two more years to pay a tax bill of £400,000, in June it made an emergency payment of £250,000 to help keep the club afloat and then in August provided another £150,000.

Halliday said that the Chairman of Jersey Reds has said on a number of occasions that his board was suffering from “investor fatigue”.

One of the factors is lack of certainty over the future structure of top-level rugby and the funding that will be available.

The 21 September meeting also heard that the Jersey government had also contacted Premiership Rugby.

The RFU has insisted that Halliday did not give any warning of Jersey Reds going into insolvency to the Professional Game Board or otherwise.

“Speaking at an RFU council meeting the day after the club made its announcement he said, ‘the timing of all this was completely out of the blue.’ In July when the RFU Club Financial Viability Working Group last examined the quarterly financial reports that clubs must submit, there was no indication the club was in trouble. In their financial forecasts they had a planned loss that was going to be covered by investors.”