New Zealand's top players are in full support of today's announced pay cuts due to coronavirus, says Players' Association boss Rob Nichol.
Earlier today, New Zealand Rugby and the New Zealand Rugby Players' Association announced that up to 50 per cent of forecasted player payments for most Kiwi professionals will be frozen for the rest of 2020.
The freeze covers the base salary of players, assembly payments and other financial benefits and incentives, as well as reductions in player-funded welfare and development activities.
Speaking to 1 NEWS this afternoon, Nichol said that New Zealand's top players are prepared to take that hit in the pocket in order to keep the game alive throughout the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
"It's not easy for anyone, in sport or outside of sport, business or personal," Nichol said.
"At the end of the day, the players wanted to step up, do the right thing by the game, get some certainty between now and the [end of] the year based on what is effectively a no rugby playing scenario, and then turn our minds to doing all we can to improve on that and get ourselves back on the field."
Nichol was also eager to emphasise that the current system won't hurt players at the lower ebb of New Zealand Rugby's pay scale, with a scaled approach to protect those not earning as much money as the likes of the All Blacks' stars.
"The model we've created does protect the lower income earners.
"Anyone on a retainer below $50,000, for example, won't have that retainer touched. Obviously, those on a retainer of more than $50,000 will be incurring a freezing of their retainer from May - or a portion of that.
"It'd be fair to say because of things like All Black assembly fees and incentive payments that are primarily targeted at more experienced, higher-end players, higher-end players are bearing more of the brunt of the pain.
"But that's OK, and everyone's got their heads around it, have accepted where it lies.
"It's never perfect, these kinds of scenarios, but I think the thing driving the players is that they wanted some certainty between now and the end of the year based on a worst-case scenario and that involved not playing any rugby.
"What we can do from there is work out what we've got to do to get back on the field, get the money flowing for the game, and hope to make things better."
The freeze should save New Zealand Rugby approximately $25 million, coming on top of a 20 per cent pay cut to all New Zealand Rugby staff.
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