Show caption Ben Ryan: ‘Quite a few people were critical of Fiji in Scotland on Saturday but they’ve had no time together’ Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian Rugby union Ben Ryan: ‘If rugby were a company people would be comparing it to an Enron’ Fiji’s gold-medal winning sevens coach is unhappy with the direction he believes the game is moving in – from the treatment of tier-two nations to laws being overlooked by referees Robert Kitson Wed 14 Nov 2018 18.00 GMT Share on Facebook

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If you love rugby union what follows will be a tough read. According to one of the world’s leading coaches, however, the time has come for the sport to get real. “If rugby were a company people would be comparing it to an Enron,” says Ben Ryan, Fiji’s Olympic gold-medal winning sevens mastermind. “It’s completely dysfunctional.”

Ryan’s charge sheet is long and chilling. With Japan set to visit Twickenham this weekend he says tier-two nations continue to be treated with almost feudal disregard, that the sport’s law-book is being wilfully ignored and that skilful players are becoming disillusioned with where 15-a-side rugby is heading. Central to it all, he believes, is the selfish decision-making of certain stakeholders which is steering the global game into deeply worrying territory.

Take smaller nations like Fiji, forever close to Ryan’s heart, and Japan. The latter’s amateur players are being paid just £13.64 (2,000 yen) per day this week to represent their country and will receive not a penny of the vast Twickenham gate receipts. “It’s not far off slave labour,” insists Ryan, who had to dig into his own pocket early in his Fiji tenure to fill the team bus with petrol and buy bottled water for his squad. “If you are playing somewhere where the crowd is over a certain figure you should get some of the money. At the moment it’s a case of ‘We’ll fly you over and give you a nice few days in the Lensbury Club but that’s where it stops.’”

The imminent announcement of a new Test structure – potentially a world league which would see the top-10 nations all play against each other, a grand final between the top-two sides plus promotion and relegation – will not solve everything. As well as more money, Ryan argues better quality preparation is critical. “Quite a few people were critical of Fiji in Scotland on Saturday but they’ve had no time together. They and Samoa have players playing on almost every continent. You can’t prepare in four or five days having played a club game the previous week.”

Short of a Pacific island-based team being admitted to Super Rugby, World Rugby transforming their funding models or the Test window for tier-two nations being widened, the gulf will remain. Ryan is even angrier about the dangerous ruck clear-outs he says referees are being told to overlook. “There’s so much grey in the lawbook. There are at least three laws – collapsing rucks, not staying on your feet wilfully and shoulders below your hips – we just ignore. I think it’s incredibly dangerous. Almost every weekend now there’s something. How do we expect teams, players and supporters to understand our game when we’ve got all this going on?”

Without a wholesale rethink, Ryan can see huge icebergs ahead. “I am genuinely concerned. I’m seeing these boys getting bigger and more physical and they’re getting smashed up on a more regular basis. Even kids at under-14 level are getting smashed at breakdowns. Never mind Brexit, we’ll just get the tackle-shield manufacturers to up production. I went to one county age-group finals day and there were yellow pads everywhere. I didn’t see any long passing skills, it was just boom, boom, boom.

“The school kids are looking at what the top players are doing. At the moment the perception is that the way to win professional games is through blunt-force trauma, winning ruck after ruck and going through 20 or 30 phases. In every single ruck there’s something going on. In the Top 14 the referees are being told: ‘Don’t even bother refereeing the breakdown, just see what happens.’ At the moment it’s just a mess. They’ve let it run away with itself.

Fiji lost 54-17 to Scotland at Murrayfield but Ryan is sympathetic: ‘They’ve had no time to prepare’. Photograph: Lee Smith/Action Images via Reuters

“We need people to start saying: ‘What is this going to look like in 20 years’ time?’ Do we want a more skill-based game that involves being on our feet more and requires tactics and technique over brawn and brute strength? If that’s our end goal, let’s look at our laws. Players who are just finishing their careers are already saying: ‘This isn’t fun.’ I’m thinking: ‘These guys are twice the size of me 20 years ago.’ What happens if that happens again in the next 20 years? Will they be wearing helmets? Or will something else have to happen?”

If only there were more prominent figures up on the barricades with the sharply-intelligent Ryan. He is in increasing demand, involved with, among others, UK Sport, the French Rugby Federation and a charity currently doing research into knife crime, but the 47-year-old’s deep concern for rugby’s future still burns. “I don’t think people are looking at the full picture. You can’t put a number on everything but we know the game is going in the wrong direction. There are still too many stakeholders and too many invested decisions. They need some independent consultants to say: ‘This is what is best for the game.’”