Paul Rees says both the RFU and WRU are struggling to make the numbers add up and face some hard choices
Two years ago, Old Elthamians were thrown out of National League One and demoted to the bottom of the English league pyramid after the death of their backer left them in debt and needing to find a new ground.
The club, which in 14 years had risen from Level 10 to Level 3 and missed out on promotion to the Championship by five points, argued that it should be relegated to National League Two. The RFU disagreed, pointing to a lack of registered players, the ground issue and debts owed to rugby creditors, and sent the club back to the lowest level.
This year Wasps, who collapsed this season under a debt pile that was 600 per cent more than that of Old Elthamians, were told they would be able to play in the Championship next season, an effective relegation, despite having no registered players and no ground. No starting over for one of England's oldest clubs which in the 2000s was the most successful in Europe.
When the strain between turnover and expenditure in rugby union throughout the world was exposed by the pandemic, governing bodies reacted by making cuts. The RFU opted to go more deeply into the amateur game, or the grassroots, because it was the professional side, primarily international rugby, which made the money for it to invest below.
And so Wasps have a value Old Elthamians, for all the club's dreams four years ago, were never going to come near to approaching. It is an era of brands rather than clubs and during the current controversy over plans to lower the tackle height in the English game from Level 3 and below from next season, a recurrent theme in county meetings across the country is that grassroots rugby is fighting for its future.
World Rugby and unions always harp on about the core values of the game. They are rooted in the heartlands, in small clubs from north to south and east to west where the remuneration for players is measured in enjoyment and camaraderie, having a pint or more with opposition players after a match in a club house which is a community hub.
When England won the World Cup in 2003, the RFU used the success to drive participation in the game in terms of players, coaches and volunteers. Now, as it and other unions, along with World Rugby, face a class action from players suffering from early onset dementia who hold them responsible for their condition, it is no longer a numbers game.
“You have to ask whether the RFU is looking to kill the community game,” said one club official last week who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals. “You can only think that there are forces high up in both the union and World Rugby who want to see the end of the game as it is played at the moment at the non-professional level.
“The mantra is the safety of the players and whether clubs go to the wall or rugby on the field looks nothing like it did, it will not matter because they can say the game is safer. So what if tens of thousands of boys and girls, women and men are no longer playing.
“I can see rugby becoming a game played at professional and semi-professional level with a pathway through academies and colleges. I have never felt so fearful about rugby's future because at our level, I do not think that we will have one. It sounds dramatic, but I am far from alone in my fear.”
The clubs elect members of the RFU's Council on a county basis but a difference from the amateur days is that an executive committee holds the day-to-day owner, bolstered by independent members with a background in business.
It is the same in Wales, but the Welsh Rugby Union's board, where the majority are from the grassroots, is a greater check on the executive because of the militancy of the rank-and-file, one reason behind this month's strike threat by players who have had enough of being treated with disdain by the governing body which still has to sign off next season's, and beyond, financial settlement with its four regions.
Players coming out of contract have not been given offers of new ones by regions who do not know what their budgets will be, leaving some players fearing they will be jobless in June. It was the trigger behind the threat to go on strike ahead of yesterday's match against England in Cardiff, and while the prospect seemed unlikely given that its financial impact would have left the regions with even less, the WRU could not afford to have its bluff called.
And so a settlement, of sorts, was agreed. Problems, however, were not resolved and the professional game in Wales remains unsustainable. The WRU has the means, at least in the short-term, to bail out its regions having had two injections of cash from the private equity company CVC which has taken out stakes in the United Rugby Championship and the Six Nations.
It did not have the will, knowing there would be a revolt from below and a likely vote of no confidence if money was diverted from the grassroots, but neither did it have the justifi- cation. Just as the RFU could have afforded to keep Wasps and Worcester going, at least until the next tax bill that could not be settled, so the WRU knew that the point had been reached where the regions had to start generating more income or face the consequences.
It is 20 years, a generation, since Wales went from a professional club base to a regional system. There were five at first, but Celtic Warriors were disbanded after a year. It means those under 25 in the country have no memory of what it used to be like in Wales when clubs like Cardiff, Llanelli, Newport,
Swansea, Neath and Pontypool had a renown well beyond their borders.
The club game gave Welsh rugby a sustainability during the amateur era, but so many dubs clustered in a narrow area meant there was not enough money to go around when the game went open in 1995. Yet five regions proved too many and it may be that one of the four remaining has to go, or suffer a significant drop in funding.
It was not difficult to see the shambles of recent weeks coming because where the RFU is run as a business, the WRU is not – now. Back in 2019, when Wales reached the semi-finals of the World Cup for the second tournament in three, the union's chief executive was Martyn Phillips, who had been CEO of B&Q, one of Britain's FTSE 100-listed companies.
Its chairman was Gareth Davies, the former Wales and Lions outside-half whose business background included television, the Royal Mail, the Welsh Development Agency and rugby having been chief executive of Cardiff and then the Dragons. After the tournament, Amanda Blanc was appointed chair of the Welsh game's Professional Rugby Board. A Welsh businesswoman who in 2020 became the first female chief executive of Aviva, she said after taking the position: “I am looking forward to bringing my corporate board experience to the WRU. Having been used to the complexities involved in running large organisations I know that this will be invaluable in helping Welsh rugby strive towards achieving greater success.”
Before the end of 2021, Phillips, Davies and Blanc had all left. Phillips resigned in 2020 and is now the chairman of Premiership Rugby. Later that year, Davies went: having served two three-year terms as the union's chairman, he offered to stay on for up to two years to help the game navigate the Covid crisis, pointing out that the loss of the chief executive and chairman in quick succession could be destabilising, but he was voted off the WRU council by member clubs who felt that his attempts to modernise governance prioritised the professional game.
Blanc went the following year, saying pointedly: “What I would say about the Welsh Rugby Union is that its governance needs modernisation. You have two very distinct parts of the game – the community and the professional – and you know the professional game needs to have the appropriate governance. Change needs to happen.”
Davies was replaced as chairman by someone whose background was the community game. Phillips's successor, appointed from within the WRU, resigned earlier this year after the governing body became mired in a sexism and bullying scandal following revelations in a television documentary.
In less than four years, Wales has gone from being successful on the field – the team was briefly top of the world rankings in 2019 – and being run on business lines to losing at home to Italy and Georgia and, in the words of the national captain Ken Owens last week, being the laughing stock of the world for its administration.
“I volunteered to stay on because I knew it was going to be a difficult time,” said Davies a few weeks after leaving the WRU. “I thought it was the right thing to do, to provide some continuity to get through it. I am actually glad I am out of it now.
“I was portrayed as only being interested in the top end of the game, but I do not think the evidence showed that. The easy comment is to say that it's because people care; the downside is they care as long as it affects them positively.
“People care more about their own little bits than the bigger picture. There is far too much self-interest. I think people looking from outside see Martyn and me leaving at the same time as maybe not the most sensible thing in the world to do. With all respect, a £100m business cannot be run by well-meaning local WRU council members. The whole game is at a tipping point.”
It was not difficult to predict the path the Welsh game would take when Davies was sacrificed. Warren Gatland was used to having to overcome rugby politics during his first stint with Wales from between 2007 and 2019, but he admitted last week that he had not appreciated just how things had deteriorated when he agreed to become head coach again in December.
Gatland fronted up to the media last week when the players and the WRU were in talks to ensure that the strike did not go ahead. He had no say in the outcome on policies that the players did not like, such as the rule which meant that anyone who left to play outside the country would not be considered for selection by Wales unless they had won at least 60 caps.
It is a protectionist measure, like the one in England which means a player who is based in another country will need an exceptional circumstance to win a cap, and imposing it at a time when squads are being thinned and salaries reduced makes growth in the game essential.
Growth is the word in the debate about whether the professional or community game takes preference. Back in the 1980s, before the precipitate decline of Wales as an international force, the club game was booming. When Cardiff played Pontypool on a Wednesday night, the turnstiles closed well before the kick-off because the ground was full.
A queue of fans jumped over them and the crowd was estimated at well over capacity at 17,000.
It was an era when supporters clambered up floodlights to watch Neath at the Gnoll and the gates at St Helen's were scaled. Club rivalry was both a strength and weakness of the Welsh game: on the one hand it stoked interest but on the other it could prove divisive, splitting the country between east and west, as the abortive 1995 World Cup campaign showed.
The regional game has not been able to generate anywhere near that level of interest. A cross-border league means that away fans outside the local derbies are scarce, although that does not stop Leinster, Munster and Ulster averaging double the attendance number of the Welsh regions.
Where to start. The Irish provinces used the Champions Cup as the vehicle to drive up gates and their big three have all won it. Wales provided the finalists in the inaugural year, when England did not take part, but are yet to trouble the etchers and only the Ospreys qualified for this season's tournament.
If any good is to come out of recent events the WRU has found itself mired in, it is that the governance issue should finally be resolved, if only because sponsors and backers have started to twitch. It should not come down to a choice between the professional and community games because both are reliant on the other.
Players start out at the bottom and the more sides there are at grassroots, the greater the chance of someone progressing to the elite. Equally, the more money that is made at the top, the further is the reach downwards. Which is why there should be separate administrations for both strands, both operating within a budget.
This is the era of uncertainty with the English and Welsh unions having to consider the consequences of losing the class action being taken by former players. The cost could be considerable, but not as great as that being endured by those who have taken the legal route.
Which is why the WRU's refusal to engage with the players until the point where its most profitable match at the Principality Stadium was in doubt was both insensitive and arrogant. Unsustainable wage levels need to be addressed, but this is not the amateur age when players were expected to do what they were told.
The WRU lost the publicity battle and some on it will hope that as time moves on, it will get away with doing as little as possible to change and carry on as before. That would be taking the road to oblivion with no turning back.
What recent events in England and Wales have shown is that connections have been severed. The two unions may have taken a different approach to the running of their games, but what they share is a feeling among the grassroots that they are being marginalised.
The World Cup will be staged later this year in France. The tournament will doubtless turn in record profits and the game will celebrate its popularity. Below decks it will be a different story and while England is perhaps big enough to afford to dismiss the aspirations of clubs like Old Elthamians, Wales is not. The game there was founded on communities and will flounder if they are left to rot.