KEY POINTS:
If the New Zealand Rugby Union and coach Graham Henry want to point the finger at anyone over the loss this week of another star All Black to English club rugby, then they can justifiably take aim at Twickenham.
The Rugby Football Union (RFU) - the administrative body that runs the English game - has inadvertently helped to finance the club deals that are taking so many All Blacks away from New Zealand.
Premier Rugby Ltd, the body which represents English rugby clubs, takes RFU money intended to encourage the signing and development of young English players and allocates it among the clubs in a way that encourages the signing of foreign players.
In a new deal coming into effect on July 1, the RFU pays compensation of 146,000 ($365,000) to the clubs for each player affected by the demands of the England Elite Squad. The RFU believed this extra money would go to the clubs to recompense those teams producing the most England players. But PRL's own formula for dividing up the cash has the opposite effect.
The clubs organisation conducted a secret ballot, the 12 members agreeing that any extra monies from the RFU for England player representation be collected and added to a general pool before distribution among the clubs.
The motion was carried unanimously and means that the more players a club provides for England, the worse off it will be.
A club source said: "The more players you have in the England squad, the less compensation you get under this scheme. The accountants have pored over this and the maximum number appears to be two or three. Any more than that and your club starts losing out big-time. We reckon that if a club supplies England with five players, it would get only 60 per cent of what the RFU intended."
It means that clubs with many England players, such as Newcastle, are starting to off-load them. In their place will come Southern Hemisphere players.
As Harlequins this week revealed a three-year deal worth 1 million for Nick Evans, Newcastle told two of their England internationals, Matthew Tait and Toby Flood, that they could leave. Newcastle's announcement raised eyebrows throughout the English game. The clubs can reduce their England contingent and use the RFU's money to recruit overseas stars, damaging England's national team and weakening sides like the All Blacks.
The player payments from the RFU is added to the long-existing pot of money which the clubs already share out from television rights and marketing. This produces approximately 2 million per club per season.
By the end of the negotiated eight-year agreement, for season 2015-2016, clubs were to have received 200,000 per player produced for England.
But under the Premier Rugby Ltd scheme, the more players clubs produce the less they will receive.
* Peter Bills is a rugby writer for Independent News & Media in London.
