RFU: Bill Sweeney bonus defended by former senior official

The bonus scheme under which Rugby Football Union chief executive Bill Sweeney received an extra £358,000 in the same year the body recorded losses and cut jobs has been defended by a former senior official.

Genevieve Shore, the ex-chair of the RFU’s remuneration committee, says she is “extremely comfortable” with the scheme.

With an increased salary of £742,000, Sweeney was paid a total of £1.1m in the 2023-24 financial year.

Compensation packages for him and other executives have prompted a grassroots revolt, with calls for Sweeney to be sacked.

Shore explained: “I feel the RFU board is run incredibly professionally and lives up to any FTSE 100 [a collection of the UK’s biggest publicly-listed companies] standard.

“I think if the executive team have hit the targets that were set for them, that’s all you can ask.”

Before she left the RFU in 2022, Shore was part of the board that put in place a programme known as the long-term incentive plan (LTIP).

The LTIP was designed to retain senior executive staff during and after the Covid pandemic, with target-linked bonuses at its conclusion.

“I’m extremely comfortable with all of the governance that took place at the time, and the communication that took place,” said Shore, who is now the executive chair of Premiership Women’s Rugby.

“What happened after 2022, I obviously don’t know, but I feel like it was all set up and in a good place.

“I’ve worked across remuneration in many organisations.

“Our challenge was: ‘Can we come out of Covid and retain that team through Covid?’

“The LTIP did what it was meant to do – the majority of the team stayed during that time period.

“The job of an executive team and a board is to build succession planning and make sure you do have a fairly seamless transition after an LTIP.

“You either re-up, or you change your team. That’s always a fine-grain decision that an executive team has to make.”

Former RFU chairman Tom Ilube, part of the RFU remuneration committee that approved Sweeney’s recent bonus, stepped down in December.

His departure came as it was confirmed there would be an independent review of the LTIP scheme that boosted the pay of Sweeney and five further executives.