Premiership Rugby to lower games limit for players from 32 to 30. GETTY IMAGES
The "controversial" 32-game limit for a Premiership Rugby player in a season "is to change," according to Michael Aylwin of the London GUARDIAN. From '19-20, elite players will be limited to 30 lots of 80 minutes or 35 involvements in a matchday squad, "whichever comes sooner." Previously the limit applied only to members of England’s elite player squad but "now it is being written into the standard Premiership contract, although it is almost impossible for a domestic player to pass the threshold." Talks are "progressing well" between the Rugby Players’ Association, the Rugby Football Union and Premiership Rugby, through the Professional Game Board. The RPA has "long bemoaned the 32-game limit as crude and arbitrary, too high to make a difference and unenforceable on those rare occasions a player approaches it." The proposed alterations "would address some of those concerns." They will come into effect with World Rugby's new global calendar, in which the June int'l window moves to July (GUARDIAN, 8/19).
