The country's leading rugby players are reportedly set to follow the lead of the All Blacks coaching group and take a pay cut to help New Zealand Rugby through the coronavirus pandemic.
With the virus having a widespread impact on businesses, pay cuts and redundancies have been prevalent in manyindustries. Now, just under two weeks after Beauden Barrett confirmed New Zealand's players were working on pay cuts with NZR, the size of those cuts have been reported.
Leading rugby journalist and broadcaster Scotty Stevenson reports All Blacks players are set to take a 10 per cent pay cut and give up most, if not all, incentives and bonuses - including retirement fund contributions "estimated at $10,000 per annum per Super Rugby player".
This would also include retirement fund contributions, estimated at $10,000 per annum per Super Rugby player
All Blacks coach Ian Foster confirmed late last month he and his coaching group had agreed to a pay cut in an interview with Newstalk ZB's Martin Devlin.
"When there are no games there's no revenue, and that's a tough thing," Foster said of taking a pay cut. "There's been a lot of shaving of the programmes, and what it's also come down to is cutting salaries. That's happened for some and happening for others."
All Blacks first five-eighth Barrett spoke to Devlin on the topic as well, and said it was a time for NZR and its employees to come together to get through these tough times.
Barrett said while how much of a cut the players will take isn't necessarily something the public needs to know, he understood why people wanted to know.
"That's the world we live in. Being professional athletes, everyone feels like they're invested in what we do and I guess that's why we have such good fans and there's such great interest in our sport," he said.
"If and when the time comes and we get all the right numbers together we'll be happy to say what numbers, what the pay cut is going to look like. I think it's normal to expect that."
