In an exclusive interview with The Rugby Paper, McAlpine - who had a decorated 36-year career in the Royal Navy, becoming deputy commander of NATO's Striking and Support Forces - rejected Sweeney's claim at Doncaster this week that the RFU had been held back by "the inability to work with certain people in the Championship".
McAlpine said that the Whole Game Union, of which he is a co-chair, is representing community clubs, who are the majority of the SGM signatories, and share the concerns of those in the Championship. He said: "This has nothing to do with getting rid of one man, it's about the process of how you manage a large organisation, and listening to the volunteers and members - and this seems like a one-way Roadshow that is telling us that we're wrong."
Having been at the coalface of a community club facing RFU cuts to development officers, the almost total withdrawal of any funding support, and yet subjected to a mountain of bureaucratic red-tape from Twickenham, McAlpine is convinced change is needed.
"I'm not sure we get any benefit at all now from being involved in the RFU, in the way we used to. There's no rugby development officer for the area around Chichester, or Sussex. In fact, there aren't any in the whole of England.
"So, developing rugby in this area is down to club chairmen and volunteers, for many of whom it's almost full time. We provide 40,000 hours of rugby a year. We have a great clubhouse and we have to squeeze as much juice out of that as we possibly can to make it a community hub.
"I don't think the RFU appreciates how expensive it is to run a club given the rents, rates, kit, and food bills.
"We don't get any financial help with travel now, and at up to £1,000 per journey I've had to stop coach travel to away games. Now players use their cars and get petrol expenses. There's no help with pitch maintenance, and there's a danger of not enough young referees being recruited."
McAlpine is scathing about the RFU's "absolutely appalling, non-intuitive" game management systems: "It should be an easy app-based system, but it takes our volunteers an hour or more to register each player. We changed our director of rugby, and I tried and failed to get him match day card registration, without which you can be fined and docked league match points.
"I'm reasonably tech savvy, and having been commander of £2 billion warships I can work a computer, so I got onto the RFU IT department. They said it was easy, and sent a video clip of how they'd done it-after which I told them that three key steps had been left out of the RFU's online guide!" "That's the sort of rubbish we're dealing with.
We get a lot of R...
McAlpine said that the Whole Game Union, of which he is a co-chair, is representing community clubs, who are the majority of the SGM signatories, and share the concerns of those in the Championship. He said: "This has nothing to do with getting rid of one man, it's about the process of how you manage a large organisation, and listening to the volunteers and members - and this seems like a one-way Roadshow that is telling us that we're wrong."
Having been at the coalface of a community club facing RFU cuts to development officers, the almost total withdrawal of any funding support, and yet subjected to a mountain of bureaucratic red-tape from Twickenham, McAlpine is convinced change is needed.
"I'm not sure we get any benefit at all now from being involved in the RFU, in the way we used to. There's no rugby development officer for the area around Chichester, or Sussex. In fact, there aren't any in the whole of England.
"So, developing rugby in this area is down to club chairmen and volunteers, for many of whom it's almost full time. We provide 40,000 hours of rugby a year. We have a great clubhouse and we have to squeeze as much juice out of that as we possibly can to make it a community hub.
"I don't think the RFU appreciates how expensive it is to run a club given the rents, rates, kit, and food bills.
"We don't get any financial help with travel now, and at up to £1,000 per journey I've had to stop coach travel to away games. Now players use their cars and get petrol expenses. There's no help with pitch maintenance, and there's a danger of not enough young referees being recruited."
McAlpine is scathing about the RFU's "absolutely appalling, non-intuitive" game management systems: "It should be an easy app-based system, but it takes our volunteers an hour or more to register each player. We changed our director of rugby, and I tried and failed to get him match day card registration, without which you can be fined and docked league match points.
"I'm reasonably tech savvy, and having been commander of £2 billion warships I can work a computer, so I got onto the RFU IT department. They said it was easy, and sent a video clip of how they'd done it-after which I told them that three key steps had been left out of the RFU's online guide!" "That's the sort of rubbish we're dealing with.
We get a lot of R...
You're reading a preview of
The Rugby Paper (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 16, 2025