Maro Itoje: “Together we must find a way to stop England player drain abroad"
Maro Itoje is urging rugby bosses to act now to prevent the drain of top English rugby talent overseas from becoming a flood.
Itoje and Marcus Smith are the latest England stars to be weighing up what to do when their current contracts expire.
Jack Nowell, Joe Marchant, Sam Simmonds, David Ribbans and Luke Cowan-Dickie have already decided to jump ship - making them unselectable under England’s policy of only picking from the Premiership.
"There’s a number of players in a similar situation," warned Itoje. “We want our best players in England available to England but we need to create the environment where that is possible.
“I want to stay in England, I want to keep playing my rugby in England. In an ideal world I would spend the majority, if not the rest, of my career at Saracens.
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“Unfortunately, at the moment there are a number of regulations and requirements making it more and more difficult for English players to stay in England.
England fly-half Marcus Smith (Getty Images)"We need to find solutions to this problem. We need to make it more attractive for the clubs to have English players.”
Even England boss Steve Borthwick wants the Rugby Football Union to revise its long-held policy of picking only from the domestic league as a deterrent to chasing big money deals in France and Japan.
Since lockdown the sport has been on its knees, with Wasps and Worcester going bust and the salary cap reduced to try to keep others afloat.
Itoje in action against Ospreys in last week's Champions Cup Round of 16 (Getty Images)That has led a growing list of players to serve notice that they will quit the Premiership this summer. Itoje calls it an “unfortunate trend”, which is a polite way of saying it is a crisis in need of urgent addressing.
“I’m not putting all the blame on clubs, I’m not putting all the blame on anyone really," he added. "This is not one versus the other, players versus the clubs or clubs versus country.
“But at the moment we have a situation where the clubs maybe aren’t rewarded enough.
England head coach Steve Borthwick (Getty Images)“We have an opportunity to collectively fix all these issues. We have an opportunity to have a situation where all parties win. None of these issues are irreversible.”
Itoje was speaking the day after an RFU investigation found Luther Burrell’s claims of racism in rugby to be true and fast-tracked publication of a new strategy to promote inclusion in the elite game.
“We need to be actively trying to be anti-racist and try to eradicate this from our sport, our game, and our lives,.” Agreed Itoje.
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Former England centre Luther Burrell (Shaun Botterill)“The more we can relate to someone and understand another person's point of view, the more we can sit in another person's shoes, the better we will be in our understanding and hopefully solving this problem.”
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