APPENDIX 17
Memorandum submitted by the Rugby Football
League
1. The Rugby Football League was honoured
that rugby league should be chosen as one of the three sports
which would participate in the new national stadium when the decision
was first taken to commission the construction of such a facility.
Rubgy league is proud of its 70-year occupancy of the existing
Wembley Stadium for the annual Challenge Cup final—renowned
for the peaceful pilgrimage of the sport's fans from its heartlands
to the capital for a celebration of its traditional northern values—together
with a number of memorable international occasions such as Test
matches against Australia and New Zealand, and the World Cup finals
of 1992 and 1995.
2. The RFL acknowledges that it is not able
to bring to the table the wealth or the popular appeal of soccer,
nor the major world sporting events of athletics. However, it
does feel that its role in the new stadium's future has been undervalued
by its treatment, especially over recent developments, in which
it has felt that it played the role of poor relation.
3. This impression began in November 1997,
when the RFL first made representations to the English National
Stadium Trust when it was given 18 hours' notice of a project
planning meeting which began in London at 9.15 a.m. the following
day—hardly conducive to attendance by a party based in Leeds,
and in spite of a request being made at a previous meeting that
start times were arranged later in the day to allow officers to
travel south.
4. The RFL feels that ENST sold it somewhat
short in a variety of regards. First, rugby league was promised
a place for a spectator trustee to sit on the Trust, to ensure
that the interests of its public were represented. The RFL attempted
to generate significant public relations value for ENST by the
advertisement of such a position and the compilation of a shortlist
from which ENST were invited to choose a nominee. However, this
idea was promptly shelved, and the RFL still does not know whether
the applicants were ever issued with a reply or an explanation.
5. Second, the RFL began detailed discussions
on the terms of residence which it would assume at the new stadium
throughout the early months of 1998—discussions which were
summarised in a negotiating document issued by the RFL on 21 May
1998. That document has yet to be acknowledged or further discussed,
either by ENST or its successor, Wembley National Stadium Ltd.
6. The RFL also takes issue with the manner
in which it was required to sign the termination deed on its existing
contract for the use of Wembley Stadium, and the interim staging
agreement for the continued use of the stadium in 1999. With negotiations
having lain dormant since May 1998, suddenly, in the week prior
to Christmas 1998, discussions between the Football Association
and Sport England reached such a state that the RFL was required
to sign these two agreements instantly, lest it be exposed as
the party which was blocking the progress of the development of
the new stadium. The RFL was called upon to demonstrate considerable
goodwill, and to accept some considerable risk, in signing off
agreements with which it was somewhat dissatisfied— an incident
which suggested that it was rather less than a third partner in
this project, but more of an inconvenience.
7. Similarly, in July 1999, the RFL was
given less than a week's notice that the design of the new stadium
was to be launched, and was summoned to a meeting prior to that
launch so that it could receive the design before it was published
to the rest of the world. A number of meetings had to be rearranged
so that WNSL's impossibly short timetable could be accommodated.
8. At that meeting, on Tuesday 27 July,
the RFL heard for the first time that athletics was to be accommodated
by means of an artificial deck which would render the stadium
unavailable for rugby league in years that there was a major athletics
championship and/or reduce its capacity from 90,000 to 65,000
in the same years. While the RFL considered this wholly unacceptable,
there was no means by which this objection could be processed
prior to the launch of the design—which was, by that stage,
a fait accompli.
9. Thereafter, the RFL received no information
over the subsequent months as discussions gathered pace over the
possible reconfiguration of the stadium, and the exclusion of
athletics. While the RFL's Chairman, Sir Rodney Walker, serves
on the board of WNSL both in this capacity and that as chairman
of UK Sport, communication from the officers of WNSL to those
of the RFL has been non-existent. What the RFL knew of developments
at the stadium, and the decisions which were made in connection
with them, it read in the national newspapers.
10. While the above may seem plaintive and
pettifogging, the RFL remains concerned that this continual treatment
as the poor relation may yet impact upon the terms which it asked
to accept for occupancy of the new stadium. Should these prove
to be inferior in any way to those which were held out during
discussions prior to May 1998, and so disadvantage rugby league's
supporters, the RFL will have to take serious thought to withdrawing
itself from the stadium and staging its major matches elsewhere.
January 2000
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