Million-pound paydays and rank-and-file rage - the RFU furore explained

The RFU says over 80% of its revenue is driven by hosting England men's matches at Twickenham. With each major game generating over £10m in ticket sales and corporate hospitality, World Cup years always leave a big hole in the finances.

Instead of a four-game Autumn Nations Series, England played two World Cup warm-up matches at Twickenham, which are far less commercially valuable. One of those was a defeat by Fiji in August, played in front of pitifully small crowd.

The rotating Six Nations schedule means that England played only two home games last season. The RFU says it always plans for a loss in a men's Rugby World Cup year but the figure for 2023-24 still dwarfs the losses in 2019.

The RFU adds that is also dealing with inflationary costs and reduced sponsorship and broadcast deals from summer warm-ups compared to November internationals.

Despite the losses, the RFU still has money from the CVC deal in 2021 in their cash reserves. But given the stagnant media rights landscape, and the lack of discernible growth in central revenues, the Six Nations deal with CVC has aged badly.

Meanwhile, the RFU recently brought in over £100m by selling the Twickenham naming rights to Allianz. However, the accounts revealed the Allianz deal is over the course of 13 years, rather than 10, and is therefore less lucrative than first reported.

Aside from the bonus, Sweeney's basic salary has grown hugely in the five years he has been in the job, from £430,000 to £742,000. While the RFU says his salary is in line with other companies of a similar size, Sweeney remains one of the highest paid administrators in UK sport.

He has spent much of his tenure firefighting - whether due to the performance of the men's senior side, his decision to hand Eddie Jones a new contract in 2020, the botched handling of tackle heights at community level, the future of the second-tier Championship, or four professional clubs going bust on his watch - but there is no doubt Sweeney has an unenviably wide brief and a huge amount of responsibility.

As the man at the helm of the RFU, he has over-arching responsibility for everything from tag rugby at community level to line-managing England head coach Steve Borthwick.

He also represents the RFU when it comes to World Rugby, European Professional Club Rugby, the Six Nations and the British and Irish Lions. It is a big job which deserves big pay, although whether it needs to be as big as £742,000 a year is debatable, as is whether the RFU should have as wide a brief as it currently does.

As for the bonus, this is a three-year Long Term Incentive Plan, which was approved by the RFU's remuneration committee off the back of the Covid pandemic, a treacherously difficult period which Sweeney has done well to navigate.

"During the pandemic, the executive team took deeper and longer salary cuts than the rest of the organisation along with a reduced bonus," explained RFU chairman Tom Ilube, who is a member of the remuneration committee.

"The [long-term incentive plan] put in place post Covid, recognised the material and voluntary reduction in remuneration, despite an exceptional increase in workload, while also incentivising the executive team to remain in post to deliver against challenging multi-year targets."

Sweeney needed to satisfy a variety of criteria to cash in the bonus. While he achieved 100% in "Financial Performance" - the area that carried comfortably the most weight - and "Participation in Community Rugby for Men", he scored 0% on "Rugby Inclusivity" and "Participation in Community Rugby for Women and Girls."

He scored 75% on "win ratio of men and women's senior teams", which was a blended percentage and was massively bolstered by the performance of the Red Roses. This all meant he received 77.5% of the bonus on offer, a sum of £358,000.