Maro Itoje gets £160k RFU top-up to keep him at Saracens

Maro Itoje and Jamie George are to hand Steve Borthwick a major boost ahead of the Six Nations Championship by signing contract extensions at Saracens after a historic financial intervention by the Rugby Football Union, who have offered the pair new ‘enhanced hybrid contracts’ to remain in England.

It is understood that both players have been offered lump sum payment of around £160,000 per season by the RFU to bolster their club contracts with Saracens, after the pair became targets of clubs in France and Japan.

The decision by two of England’s most experienced and high-profile forwards to commit to the new central contract system will be seen as a timely piece of good news following the decision by Henry Arundell to forfeit the opportunity to play international rugby by signing a contract extension at Racing 92 this week.

Arundell would have been able to play in the Six Nations this season if he had taken up an offer to join Bath next season under the exceptional circumstances rule of the overseas selection policy that stipulates players must be based in England to play for the national side.

He was also offered a hybrid contract but there were no guarantees that Arundell would have made the England side this season however, having had a marginal role during the World Cup, whereas Itoje and George will remain key figures in Borthwick’s plans for at least the next two seasons.

The guaranteed payment replaces the previous system of match fees of around £20,000 which would only be paid to players in the match day 23-man squads, leaving the players at risk of missing out if they were injured or not selected on form.

It also allows the player to make longer-term decisions about when to undergo medical treatments such as surgery even if it means missing Test matches for the betterment of their welfare.

While the new professional game partnership between the RFU and Premiership Rugby has yet to be finalised, it is understood that Borthwick has been able to move swiftly to identify key players at risk of moving overseas.

Major uncertainty had hung over Itoje’s future because a change to the salary cap regulations now meant that clubs can only nominate one, not two players as ‘marquee’, whose salaries sit outside of the cap.

With Owen Farrell being retained as Saracens ‘marquee player’, Itoje was facing a significant drop in salary, leading to interest from clubs in France and Japan while the 33 year-old George was also a target for French club Lyon.

The RFU intervention stems a flow of talent out of the Premiership that has seen Northampton Saints captain Lewis Ludlam set to join Toulon next season despite being a respected and influential member of Borthwick’s squad at the World Cup while Ludlam’s ex-Saints team-mate David Ribbans is already with Toulon.

Former Harlequins centre Joe Marchant has joined Stade Francais, Jack Willis is at Toulouse, Jack Nowell at La Rochelle, Sam Simmonds at Montpellier and Joe Simmonds at Pau.

Gloucester hooker Jack Singleton has also forfeited the right to play in this season’s Six Nations by signing for Toulon on loan for the remainder of the season.

‘RFU risked losing face of English game’

Regardless of whether Maro Itoje has physically put pen to paper, the second row’s commitment to signing a hybrid contract is the best form of Christmas card that Bill Sweeney, the Rugby Football Union chief executive, could place on his Twickenham mantlepiece.

Hybrid contracts – the RFU prefer the term ‘enhanced Elite Player Squad’ – are the most eye-catching part of the prospective Professional Game Partnership that is due to be signed with Premiership Rugby at some point in early 2024. In effect, the RFU are scrapping the £20,000 match fee system in exchange for paying their leading 25 players a fixed annual sum of around £160,000. This added security should, in theory, persuade England’s leading performers to stay in the Premiership in spite of higher club wages in France and Japan where they would be ineligible for international selection.

Yet the premise of this idea took a hefty blow when as Telegraph Sport first reported Henry Arundell decided that he was better placed staying in Paris under Stuart Lancaster at Racing 92 rather than returning to Bath with the sweetener of a hybrid contract. Arundell is arguably the hottest young English player around, at least when it comes to appearing in social media clips. Whether he would have started in the Six Nations is entirely another question. Losing him for three years will be considered somewhere between an annoyance and aggravation by Steve Borthwick, the England head coach whom, as far as we know, does not have access to a TikTok account.

Losing Itoje, on the other hand, would have been a completely different equation. With Owen Farrell stepping away from international rugby for an intermediate period, Itoje is now the face of this England team. Seeing the 29-year-old depart for the Top 14 would have sent the message that the grass truly is greener in France. The alarm bells at both the RFU and Premiership Rugby would have been deafening.

Yet was this ever a realistic proposition? By losing his marquee status at Saracens, his club wages have almost halved to around £400,000. Would a French club have been willing to shell out up to match his old wage plus interest to bring Les Rosbifs’ prime asset across La Manche? Lyon were sniffing at one point but French clubs tend to prize chunkier second rows like Will Skelton for their weekly dogfights.

Even if a French club could outbid the combined Saracens and RFU offer, Itoje’s plentiful commercial opportunities would shrink the moment he ceases to be an England international. And all those nice rest periods that the Rugby Players’ Association have ensured will be a part of the new PGP? They don’t exist in France. For every player like Jack Willis who has loved the Gallic experience, at least two have hated the weekly grind.

Let’s keep playing with the hypotheticals: let’s say Itoje went to Lyon on a three-year deal so he could come back in time for the 2027 World Cup. Who is to say he walks back into the team with Ollie Chessum and George Martin’s emergence over the past 12 months? Or if Exeter’s Rui Tuima or Bath’s Ewen Richards live up to their promise as the vanguard of a host of promising second rows? And if nothing else Borthwick values loyalty.

All in all it is a sensible decision for everyone. Itoje’s representatives did their part by fluttering their eyelids towards the Top 14, which no doubt helped their negotiations, but his interests were best served by staying at Saracens.

Indeed it could be argued that Jamie George’s decision to also remain at the StoneX has more important short-term benefits given England’s shallow depth at hooker. Nor will this stop players such as Lewis Ludlam following fellow World Cup squad members Arundell, Willis, Joe Marchant and Dave Ribbans from heading to France.

But for symbolism if nothing else, the RFU needed to keep Itoje in the Premiership and for that reason inside Twickenham it will feel like the best festive pick-me-up since John McClane rescued his wife at the climax of Die Hard.