GARETH Davies has been forced to admit defeat in his plan to modernise the governance of Welsh rugby. The WRU chairman had hoped to reduce the nine archaic districts to a more streamlined five regional community boards.
There seemed to be a strong appetite for change with 93 per cent support for the proposals before Christmas. But now the WRU are set to issue a letter to clubs notifying them the plans won't be put to an emergency general meeting after they were blocked by the WRU's own board. Some board members and districts feared losing power.
Davies said: “We wanted to give more control over the community game to local boards, but bigger boards than before. We have to change otherwise we are going to fall further and further behind other nations who have madethese changes.” Now in his second and final term as chairman, Davies was determined to bring about change at the top to allow the now £80m per annum business of Welsh rugby to flourish at all levels.
In his Christmas message to clubs he talked of the 2017/18 season in Wales being “the one in which Welsh rugby was re-born”. His argument to his board members, who are elected by the current nine grass-roots districts, is that they have little knowledge of, or input into, the professional end of the game that is the financial engine for rugby in Wales.
He wanted to strengthen the running of the game at semi-professional and community levels by creating five regional boards based on the current four Welsh regions and RGC 1404. He then wanted to create a council that could run the professional game. Plans for the creation of a new council still look like going ahead, with the districts feeding into that.
There are also plans to create a professional rugby board, with representation from the four regions and team Wales.
“We have won a few battles, but it became obvious we weren't going to get through our plans to move from nine to five districts,” admitted Davies.
“A letter will be going out to the clubs this week informing them of the decision and thanking them for their attendance at the meetings we held around Wales to outline our plans. We could see the way things were going.”
Davies will also raise at a World Rugby meeting in Dublin this week the question of what kind of female representatives they wish to see joining the board after the green light was given to adding 17 new members. As a Tier 1 Union Wales will be entitled to appoint a third representative, providing it is a woman.
There is currently only one female member on the WRU board, Aileen Richards, introduced as one of two independent nonexecutive directors in 2015.
Julie Paterson, head of rugby operations since 2016, sits on the executive board, but is not a member of the board of directors. They could be the only two options to take up a seat on World Rugby.
