Rugby | England players not sharing match fees with Samoa players

England’s players have decided not to donate some of their match fee to Samoa’s players on ethical grounds.

Veteran prop Dan Cole said it shouldn’t even be a players’ call.

The Samoa Rugby Union announced this month it was bankrupt, though World Rugby has since said it wasn’t.

England plays Samoa tomorrow at Twickenham, and Cole’s teammate, Mako Vunipola, suggested the England players gift 1,000 pounds (USD1,300) of their 22,000 pounds ($29,000) match fee to Samoa players who are being paid 650 pounds ($860).

The England players sympathized with Samoa’s plight, but opted not to make any personal payments.

“The decision was made along the ethics of paying an opposition to play against you, and the future issues that might create,” Cole said.

“It was not so much about opposition asking for pay, but the potential for the scenario of, ‘We’ve paid you before, now you owe us a favor.’

“I would love for other nations to get paid what we get paid, but it’s above our station as players. We play the game against every opposition, whoever they are, and it’s not for us to get involved in the politics of paying people.”

England’s Rugby Football Union has already promised to give Samoa 75,000 pounds ($99,700) as a goodwill gesture, as it did for Fiji last year. But it will not share any of the matchday revenue from a sold- out Twickenham of about 5 million pounds ($6.6 million).

Cole said Samoa’s financial issue needed to be dealt with at union level.

“You need to go above players, you need to go to the unions, you need to go to World Rugby, and you need to address it at that level rather than just making this an England versus Samoa issue,” he told the BBC.

“The political side of things, the contracts that are signed, are negotiated away from our field. Are you going to ask every union: Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, Wales? You need to get everyone together – it’s not just an England campaign.”

World Rugby has said it has administrative issues with the Samoa union, which is run by Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi.

Cole said the Samoa players deserved to be paid more, and it was vital that teams such as Manu Samoa are able to compete on the global stage.

“You don’t want just two or three superpowers playing – that will eventually harm the game,” he said. “You want as many different international teams playing.” AP

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