The High Court has granted limited interim protection to senior rugby official Geoffrey Evans while his employment dispute with an operating company of the International Rugby Board awaits trial.
Evans was recruited in 2001 from South Bank University in London, where he held a permanent academic post. A letter from the late IRB chairman Vernon Pugh offered him the position of Game Development Manager for a five-year term beginning on 1 September 2001. No fuller employment contract was subsequently produced.
Evans’s role later became Head of Game Development. In late 2004, IRFB Services (Ireland) Limited began a significant restructuring. Its game development and tournaments departments were to be merged into a new rugby department, initially headed by Mark Egan.
Evans argued that his five-year contract could only be terminated early for misconduct or failures of performance of the type identified in his appointment letter. He also maintained that the proposed restructuring would substantially reduce the status and responsibilities of his role.
Mr Justice Clarke was not deciding those issues finally. At the interlocutory stage, the question was whether Evans had a fair case to be tried and whether temporary court protection was justified before the full hearing.
The judge found it arguable both that Evans had a fixed-term contract and that the proposed changes could amount to a sufficiently radical alteration of his duties to constitute breach of contract.
The court also found damages might not adequately compensate him. His complaint concerned loss of status, responsibility and job satisfaction rather than an immediate loss of salary.
However, the judge declined to halt the IRB restructuring or recruitment process entirely. Such an order could significantly disrupt an international organisation already implementing structural changes.
Instead, the court proposed an injunction allowing recruitment to continue only on terms preserving Evans’s rights if he later succeeded at trial. The precise wording was left for further submissions, with the court also seeking an expedited full hearing.