Welsh rugby is overstretched, underfunded and falling apart again

It’s a wet Wednesday afternoon, and Wales are holding an open training session at the Principality Stadium. Admission is free, apart from the one-pound booking fee, and the 6,000 seats they’ve made available are filled with raucous kids and weary parents looking for something new to do during a rainy half-term day. The announcer keeps reminding everyone that tickets are still available for all four of Wales’ autumn internationals, against Argentina on Sunday, Japan, New Zealand and South Africa. No one in the media seats can quite remember the last time there were spare tickets for a Test match against the All Blacks.

I join a couple of old boys loitering in the back rows. They’re Mervyn and Steve, down from Pontypridd. The previous Friday the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) had announced their grand plan to revitalise the sport, which included – almost an hour into their press conference – the revelation that they are going to scrap one of the four regional teams. Everyone agrees that the four regions are overstretched and underfunded. A Welsh team has not finished in the top seven of the United Rugby Championship (URC) since before the pandemic. The decision to make a cut was easy enough. The harder part is figuring out who, why and when, and the hardest is persuading everyone to go along with it.

“Well, I think we all agree that it’s got to be done,” says Steve. Mervyn cuts in. “Yes but the question is how do you do it?” Never mind this latest cut, the two men, and their friends, still have not forgiven the governing body for the ones made 20 years ago. Their regional side, the Celtic Warriors, were formed in 2003 when their team, Pontypridd, were merged with Bridgend, and then went into liquidation 12 months later. After listening to them talk through these old grievances for a few minutes, I ask them whether they trust the WRU to get it right this time. Mervyn snorts. Steve stays nothing.

On the field, the national team have endured an 18-game losing streak, which they only just broke when they beat Japan in July. Sunday’s opponents Argentina are six places above Wales in the latest world rankings. The governing body have been damned as institutionally dysfunctional, sexist, racist and homophobic by an independent report, weathered a dispute with senior players which almost ended in a strike, an on-going row with two of the regional teams, Scarlets and Ospreys, who have refused to sign a participation agreements and had to take over the running of a third, Cardiff, when it went bust. The list goes on.

The chief executive appointed to sort it all out, Abi Tierney, is on indefinite medical leave after a cancer diagnosis.

It is no secret that the WRU’s new director of rugby, Dave Reddin, wanted to cut another regional team, too. He was adamant they only have the money, and players, to resource two professional men’s teams, but admitted, “everyone hated that idea”. Reddin’s website describes him as “Transformational Change Leader”. During 20 years working with the England rugby, football and British Olympic teams, he has learned all the buzzwords and how to use them. He’s got a talent for talking about processes and designing pathways, his plans to reshape the Welsh youth system are impressive. It is less clear that he can handle the politics.

“Frankly,” Reddin said two weeks ago, “I don’t care who beat the All Blacks 40 years ago.” There are 10s of thousands of Scarlets fans who do and Reddin’s remark made enemies of plenty of them.

Dave Reddin, pictured here at a press conference discussing the WRU’s review and consultation into the future of the elite game in Wales, is an unpopular figure among supporters. Photograph: Kian Abdullah/Huw Evans/Shutterstock

Under the WRU’s plans there’s only room for one team in the west, and everyone’s best guess is that either the Scarlets or Ospreys, the only two Welsh teams who have ever actually won the URC, will have to merge, or that one of them will have to make way. The WRU confused everyone by suggesting that it would be possible for one of the four current teams to take over another of the future three, appearing to suggest they might be hoping one of the current private investors will want to take over the Cardiff team which is owned by the union. The union want to take on full control of regional rugby, but they can’t afford to unless they can find partners who are happy to let them do it.

Reddin seems to believe it will all work so long as everyone agrees to get along. “Let’s get together,” he said in a recent interview, “if you want to go fast you go alone, if you want to go far you go together, everyone’s had their say, we’ve made decisions, and what we need people to do now is get behind it.” And Kumbaya to that. Meanwhile, Ospreys have just has apologised to the Scarlets after their new investors were described as “con men” during a club event, and Scarlets’ have just failed in their attempt to block Ospreys redevelopment of the St Helen’s Ground in Swansea by lodging multiple planning objections with the local council and calling on the Welsh government to intervene.

The only thing the two teams appear to agree on is that neither of them trusts the WRU. A lot of people in Welsh rugby, like Mervyn and Steve, wish they could undo the decisions the union made in the early 2000s, when they first brought in the regional system, and refused an offer to have their clubs join up to the English league.

Steve Tandy has brought some positivity to the Wales setup with his strong coaching staff and improved training regime. Photograph: Chris Fairweather/Huw Evans/Shutterstock

At the Principality, the Welsh players are done running through drills and are now playing a game of touch-rugby. Bodies jink and weave in between the opposition, the ball flickers back and forth between teammates. No doubt there are still plenty of talented young players in Wales, but a number of them have no idea who will be paying them, or whether they will still have a job in the professional game in a couple of years’ time. The WRU were the only major union who didn’t sign the letter promising to ban players who joined the new breakaway league, R360, perhaps because their plans mean plenty of players are going to have to find new employers.

There are noises off about a possible strike, and everyone is dreading the match against the Springboks in particular since it falls outside the international window, and Wales will have to do without all their players who are based in England. The regional teams are playing that weekend, too.

Out in the middle, the new head coach, Steve Tandy, pulls his squad into a huddle. No one seems to have a bad word to say about Tandy, and he has put together an impressive coaching team, led by Danny Wilson from Harlequins and Matt Sherratt from Cardiff, as well as Rhys Patchell, Duncan Jones and Dan Lydiate. He has changed up their training regime, switched around the dressing rooms they use, small changes which he hopes will all add up to a bigger one during their four autumn games. “It feels completely different to last year,” says Freddie Thomas, “it was quite a quiet group last year, but now all the boys are speaking up in meetings, there’s a real buy-in.” Some hope. And some hope.