There are two lenses here. As a guy who has unstintingly backed Saracens and probably saved them from folding multiple times over, and as a lifelong supporter of rugby, Nigel Wray deserves a lot of respect.
But there are a dozen or so other well-heeled businessmen who have also invested heavily in keeping their favourite rugby club afloat and competitive. These people spend millions every year to service clubs’ debts - which in most cases keep growing year on year - in the hope that one day the sport will become sustainable.
As someone who was prepared to systematically undermine the terms that they had all agreed between them to keep rugby sustainable, not once, but twice and with the full extent of his distortion of the cap never being made apparent, Wray deserves condemnation.
Rugby would be poorer without his largesse, but it is also poorer because of his cheating. I suspect he’s largely moving aside now because of the optics for Saracens - having a different ownership and his own role significantly reduced may well be the result of pressure from sponsors and other financial backers as the price of continued involvement.
Although his exit isn’t complete, it probably does mark the point at which we should put it behind us, unless further evidence of wrongdoing emerges. Which I hope will not be the case, but they do have form.
