I wanted to take an opportunity to write to say thank you to all those who voted in last week’s Special General Meeting and to give you a direction of travel on where we go next.

In meeting many of you in clubhouses around the country over recent months, we were given a very clear picture of areas you want us to prioritise for the community game.

Work on some of these areas was already well advanced but we accept that there are many others where we can do more and in a document we published a few weeks ago we identified priority areas which you can read here.

I know that you want to see action quickly so I thought it would be useful to share the three immediate priorities in this work.

These are around:

- Governance Reform
- Improved Communications
- More Support to Grow Participation

Governance Reform

We have long wanted to modernise the way in which we run rugby in England, which is still modelled on a system that was set up over 100 years ago.

The RFU is a membership organisation, and this will never change, but there are better, and more efficient ways in which we can strengthen the role of our members.

In voting to expedite governance changes last week at the SGM, we have a mandate now to make real reform here and in the coming weeks we will circulate a consultation paper which will;

- Propose changes to the organisational structures of the RFU
- Explore the arrangements for decision making and set out clearly what is working and what isn’t
- Recommend how our members are much better represented in our policy and decision-making

I hope you will all take part in this vital piece of work and more details will be shared soon as we work harder to ensure that members play a much fuller part in decision making.

Improved Communications

It was clear when we went and spoke directly to many of you in recent months that lots of you feel disconnected to the Union; feel that your voices are being ignored and that our engagement with you is too limited.

We are already working on addressing this and areas we will look to improve include:

- Providing far more opportunities for face to face and virtual interaction between members and a range of people working at the RFU
- Delivering more regular and more engaging updates on topical issues – recent, current and future
- Sharing clearer information on important ‘need to know’ and ‘nice to know’ issues that may impact the community game
- Creating platforms for members to tell us about the brilliant work you do, sharing your stories, challenges and successes and championing great work that will inspire others

More support to grow participation

We heard repeatedly that the cuts we felt forced to make during the pandemic to our development officer network has caused challenges for members, especially clubs.

We are also now committing to the below, with more detail to follow soon.

- Increasing the footprint of rugby in schools by engaging 100 School Rugby Managers, employed locally by other organisations to coach rugby in schools, part funded by the RFU. Some 40 of these roles have already been filled and we are speeding up the remaining hires. We are also introducing 5,000 schools to T1 rugby over the next four years
- Expanding further our development officer network to add to the 90 staff now regionally deployed

Doing this together

It has been a very challenging period for rugby off the field in England.

The division sowed by those who brought forward the original SGM motion has played out aggressively in the media and it would be remiss of me not to admit that it has not been an easy time for me personally. The messages of support that I received from many of you that I have met at club visits during my time at the RFU was a key encouragement for continued commitment and for our ongoing work.

However, this role is a privilege and the scrutiny that comes with it is part and parcel of the responsibility and is absolutely right that members can hold leaders of our great sport to account in the way that played out last week.

Ultimately this process will help us to reengage our membership and push forward changes we have long wanted to implement and our members delivered a clear message that they wanted the leadership team we have here to get on with the job and make improvements.

However, it is vital not to lose sight of the many brilliant things happening in rugby and the bright future I fully believe is ahead of us.

We can only do this together and I look forward to a much closer relationship between the Union and all our game's stakeholders in future.

Bill Sweeney
CEO