The rugby season in Wales has ended on a high with the Scarlets’ thrilling capture of the Guinness Pro12 title in Dublin. But what shape is the game in at regional level and below? Geraint Powell gives his tier-ful end-of-season report.
(1) WRU Premiership
The WRU Premiership, so-called “Gazebo-land” thanks to the “A” license criteria, with the introduction of a 3 year non-strategic 14 May 2016 snapshot ring fence, was always likely to be dominated by the performance of the 4 promoted clubs in an expanded ring fenced format with a very unusual and commercially risky mid-season split.
Big-spending Merthyr winning the league and RGC1404 winning the WRU National Cup, whilst Bargoed and Swansea finished the bottom two clubs. Make of that what you wish. Few were surprised by Merthyr and RGC both doing so well. Much criticism of the player spending of the Merthyr benefactor, but at least it has been accompanied by infrastructure improvements such as the pitch and a gym. The Chief, Dale McIntosh, trying to instil a culture that will outlive a transient benefactor.
The RGC project is a joy to behold, the enthusiasm of their supporters is such a contrast to the suspicion and jaded cynicism of so many weary alienated supporters in the South Wales valleys. A 10/12 axis of Jacob Botica and Tiaan Loots getting so much out of locally produced players from across North Wales.
Tier 1, after the split, was completely dominated by the RGC development region and the independent clubs and with every single club hard-wired to the regions failing to make the cut for Tier 1. Every single one. Clear evidence of neglect, of management and resources focussed on the core business under financial stress, not of player development brilliance. Aberavon impressed and reached the final, despite losing a star player in upholding an internal point of principle. Well run Bedwas continued to punch above their weight, but for the last season under respected veteran coach Steve Law AKA Spot. He now heads to Cardiff.
Defending champions Ebbw Vale and beaten finalists Pontypridd both missing the play-offs this season, the latter having an injury list from hell in 2016-17 whilst laying future front 5 foundations. There will be coaching changes at both, most notably Justin Burnell returning to Welsh rugby. The consensus is that Pontypridd have gone a little soft, their former enforcer Craig Locke lifting the WRU Premiership trophy as Merthyr captain.
Tier 2 was won by Newport, a crumb of comfort in the weeks following the transfer of the Dragons and Rodney Parade to the WRU member clubs collectively. Silverware for winning 9th position, but a plate competition that is for traditionalists more suited to a one day 7s tournament than a season long league. Cardiff finished 14th, the transfer of valleys academy players there by the region achieving nothing but yet further antagonism in that troubled area of Welsh rugby.
A ridiculous media storm over one 3G pitch, fan expectations now better adjusted in relation to abrasion injuries if not yet in relation to ankle injuries. Everything in this world comes with a cost, and these financially lucrative 3G surfaces are no different. Treasurers love them, and rightfully so as revenue earning community hubs, but they can be unforgiving upon skin on a warm dry day and upon ankles when feet are planted.
If this leak is correct, apparently a proposed mid-season split to remain in 2017-18 but in a radically different format of 14 East/West conference home and away matches and then 15 home or away matches. An increase from 22 matches, but apparently no play-offs. An East conference clearly currently far stronger than a West conference, controversy ahead if a West club wins the league primarily due to their matches against other West clubs.
But at least more commercially sensible in planning ahead. 29 matches and known at the outset in terms of selling sponsorship. There is no point in closing down weekends for the British & Irish Cup, if most WRU Premiership fans will currently not attend such matches.
A WRU Premiership trying to accommodate and reconcile quality v quantity, in a 16 club league being asked to do much of the pathway work of 4 non-existent “A” teams of inclusive representative regions. Geraint John, tasked with somehow trying to reconcile the irreconcilable and not spending £1.4 million of WRU funding on a mass of low intensity dead rubber fixtures that you would get with a traditional 15 home/15 away league and especially one with no relegation.
The WRU unable to grant the one thing the fans want, a full home and away fixture list. Too many resulting low intensity matches to justify all that pathway funding.
Some fools wanting kids v kids in the name of a “development” that is not taking place, the more sensible appreciating the requirement to build a “best of the rest” competitive environment in which kids being groomed for the regions can actually develop and other late developers can “bridge the gap” to the non-Test professional tier.
If you’re an academy teenager with aspirations to play professional rugby at lock, let’s start by seeing how you go against the likes of Craig Locke, Lou Reed, Chris Dicomidis, Damien Hudd and Meredydd Francis. One step at a time. Learn to crawl before you try and sprint. Seb Davies showed his potential at Pontypridd in 2015-16, now Sean Moore for them in 2016-17. Rugby is still not exclusively gyms and aerobics.
A public disclosure of the accounts of all 16 clubs would be interesting, player inflation clearly on the rise and a false market being created. Absolutely, and relative to income/donations. And including by the £1.4 million of WRU funding committed.
(2) WRU Championship
With 5 clubs finishing so far ahead of the others in 2015-16, 4 of which were promoted, the question in 2016-17 was always going to be whether any club could mount a serious challenge to the missing out Pontypool.
They could not, not even the chasing Narberth, an ever improving Pooler taking out their frustrations on Llanelli and Cardiff in the WRU National Cup before succumbing to Cross Keys on bottomless ground.
In the knowledge that the current ring fencing between the WRU Premiership and WRU Championship could easily be extended or made permanent in 2019, the five regional clubs above them in the WRU Premiership perhaps currently better tuned into the regional future than a Pooler who should seek to become the representative region’s future WRU Premiership mini-hub for Torfaen.
The WRU Championship soon dividing into 5 distinct sections – Pontypool / Narberth / Tata & Beddau / 7 clubs / Dunvant. Newbridge ultimately performing an escape act worthy of Houdini, condemning to relegation a somewhat unlucky Glamorgan Wanderers amongst a close pack of clubs. Cardiff Met at least denying Pooler a clean sweep towards the end, fighting for their (new student enticing) survival and catching Pooler with their post-Cup run hangover.
Will other clubs raise to the challenge in 2017-18, including newly promoted Rhydyfelin (how Pontypridd missed Chris Phillips in 2016-17) and Trebanos, or will this league at the top end simply remain in suspended animation pending future promotion decisions and whether this division has now been permanently severed from above?
If the WRU Championship is currently severed from above, we have seen how it is hardly well integrated with below (link). When the league was scheduled to finish on 1 April 2017, it is unlikely that much scheduling thought went into the possibility of some of the clubs, e.g. Beddau and (as in fact turned out) Bedlinog, playing in a mid-May Mid District Cup final. Another failure of integration, the curse of modern Welsh rugby.
There is an art to drafting fixture lists, balancing competition integrity against rugby and commercial requirements. 27 years since national leagues were introduced in Welsh rugby, the internal expertise remains sadly lacking within the WRU. Having looked at some of the lower leagues, I am glad they fall outside the scope of this review. Some treasurers must be close to implosion.
The WRU Championship was stuck at 12 clubs, when it clearly needed 14 clubs. I have yet to meet anybody who argues otherwise. This being Welsh rugby, it will start again next season with 12 clubs. The long overdue break-up of over centralised control in Westgate Street to empowering regional structures cannot come quickly enough.
(3) Premiership Selects
It was another difficult season for the Premiership Selects, a consumer offering of almost supreme indifference to both regional and club fans.
Personally missing the last 5 minutes of Pontypool Utd v Talywain to watch Newport Gwent Dragons Premiership Select v Bedford Blues, leaving the club derby crowd for the solitude of a Premiership Select match. Incomprehension from some that I was watching such a match without being personally related to one of the players. A shame, because it was a fast enjoyable match on the 3G at Ystrad Mynach.
But hybrid “A” teams of hybrid “regions”, competing in the British + Irish Cup only, a consumer offering disaster simply waiting to happen. They seem to achieve nothing, other than to prevent the WRU Premiership itself from being distorted through some players migrating towards any 4 Welsh clubs entered into the British + Irish Cup and perpetuating the strength of those clubs. For, if we have 16 Welsh Premiership clubs, the other participants will not accept 16 Welsh entrants.
The performance ratio improved from 22.9% to 41.67%, albeit only one team in a weak pool was ever really in the quarter-final race. The Cardiff Blues Premiership Select finally won a match, at the twelfth attempt. Credit to the guest coach that evening.
There were some real hidings along the way. The Cardiff Blues 12-49 at Jersey. The Ospreys 5-41 at the Cornish Pirates. The Scarlets 13-65 at Leinster “A”. The Newport Gwent Dragons 19-56 at the Ealing Trailfinders.
The English mood encapsulated by BBC Cornwall rugby correspondent Dick Straughan, after one particular embarrassment down in Penzance.
The Scarlets side even reached the knock-out stages, before losing 7-84 at Ealing in the quarter-finals. That’s right, 7-84. The pubs did not run dry. Not in Llanelli anyway. The Trailfinders may have drunk a few pints, before succumbing 25-9 to eventual winners Munster “A” in the semi-final. This match will not be entering Scarlets folklore. Max Boyce has no doubt promised Phil Bennett never to mention it ever again.
Much official talk about player development, a positive invitation to Welsh rugby’s wits. “Developing humility in defeat.” “Developing inter-personal skills in interacting with [the few present] fans in retrieving the ball after opposition conversions.” You get the picture. Developing a culture of accepting defeat against the English and the Irish, the real fear.
The message must surely be dawning on most WRU directors and executives that the tiers below the regions cannot be sorted until the regionalism itself is sorted.
(4) Regions
We have other matches that will enter Scarlets folklore, away from the Premiership Select concept.
In the summer of 2014, when old school Kiwi Wayne Pivac was brought in to coach Simon Easterby’s forwards at the Scarlets and found himself almost immediately bumped up to head coach to replace Easterby as he headed off to Joe Schmidt’s Irish national set-up, the talk in the Cardiff-centric Welsh rugby media was mostly about fellow Kiwi Mark Hammett arriving at the Cardiff Blues.
Hammett is long gone, now assisting at the Highlanders, and the story has very much been the rise of the Scarlets under Pivac. He has employed Stephen Jones well as attack coach and is rapidly becoming the only Welsh and/or domestic candidate to succeed Warren Gatland in 2020. And that category would include Rob Howley and Dai Young.
But keep an eye on Dave Rennie at Glasgow, and also on Scott Robertson at the Crusaders. Kiwi coaches have generally had far more success in imposing themselves on the Welsh dressing room and rooting out undesirable player power. Ask Mike Ruddock and Gareth Jenkins, for a start.
The Scarlets have been sizzling in recent months, rising to 3rd place in the Pro12 by the end of the regular season and culminating in taking apart Leinster at the RDS in Dublin in the Pro12 semi-final and Munster at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin in the Pro12 final. An earlier win over Toulon and a draw with Saracens in Europe augured well for a good late season, where the spring weather favours a region such as the Scarlets.
Munster are not the force of 10 years ago, and Leinster are not the force of 5 years ago, but it raises serious questions about the failure of Welsh rugby to put together any cohesive strategic business/rugby model at this level in the last 22 years.
Whether this title win will ultimately prove a positive or a negative for Welsh rugby, only time will tell. The tendency, when any success is achieved at this permanently troubled and flawed tier of the WRU pyramid, is for an euphoric collective bout of mass denial and cognitive dissonance to break out, usually encouraged and fuelled by the lower end of the Welsh rugby media, and accompanied by calls to waste more money on a model that is ultimately unsustainable and unviable rather than to take the harder and correct decisions and embrace painful modernisation.
So even the limited successes ultimately usually prove counterproductive and self-defeating in the end, such is Welsh rugby.
The Scarlets have recruited well externally, from Johnny McNicholl to Hadleigh Parkes to John Barclay, and have always been very good had home grown player development, but they will celebrate this title by waving goodbye to Liam Williams to Saracens. That is the harsh financial reality, the real hangover after the celebratory party. Another one bites the dust. An annual structural financial deficit of around £2 million, too few consumers for professional rugby duplication so close together around Swansea.
The regional news elsewhere has pretty much been unrelentingly grim.
The form of the Ospreys, whose balance sheet remains less stressed as a result of their dominance of Roger Lewis’s internal market in marquee dual central contracts and their ground share with a Premier League soccer club, trailed off to an alarming extent. Their rampant pool dominance in Europe’s plate competition counting for nothing with their all too familiar knock-out stage demise, this time against Stade Francais in the quarter-final at the Principality Stadium, their form also falling away in the Pro12 and culminating in 4th place and their limp semi-final defeat at Munster. All of Welsh rugby is hoping that this was down to a significant injury list, rather than any wider emerging malaise at the Liberty.
At least both the Scarlets and the Ospreys qualified for the Pro12 play-offs and will be in the main European competition next season.
The problems have been far worse in South East Wales, where greater revenue suppressing divisions over identity and branding and the absence of significant stadia state aid was always going to bring financial problems there to a head much earlier than in South West Wales.
The drift at the Newport Gwent Dragons for over a decade ultimately ended by Chief Executive Stuart Davies and WRU Chief Executive Martyn Phillips, the franchise (and the Rodney Parade stadium) acquired by the governing body for rebuilding and later return to part private ownership under no doubt a radically different business model. They finished in 11th place in the Pro12, behind Treviso and only ahead of Zebre.
Tony Brown and Martyn Hazell were prepared to write-off millions, if the WRU were prepared to run with the region without all the divisive club past issues. Over to the 300+ club owners of the WRU, and especially to the 73 regional club stakeholders.
If the Rugby Services Agreement is renewed with the other three “external service suppliers” in 2020, there will certainly be no need for the Dragons and 25% of WRU funding to be part of that archaic model. Interesting times lie ahead at the Dragons, after the somewhat damp squib of what will be a transitional 2017-18 (link).
At least the Dragons have now bottomed out, even if they will outwardly be kind of rumbling along the bottom in 2017-18. But they must be ready to hit the ground running in 2018-19, not least due to the public and private work in 2017-18.
As for the soap opera otherwise known as the Cardiff Blues, and as long suspected, it all now comes down to the desired redevelopment of the Cardiff Arms Park. To avoid insolvency, and the WRU having to start afresh upon full breakage in that region. The tired old joke of a property development company with an ancillary rugby business becoming less and less amusing with every passing year of under performance.
They finished in 7th place in the Pro12, and 7th place will never be good enough or acceptable for a region that is doubly blessed with the commercial capital of the country and most of the highly desirable Mid District rugby player pathway.
If a redevelopment takes place, the Athletic Club entrusting the job to their tenant, the funding directors will either have to dig deep for a few years to cover rugby losses or engage in significant slashing of business costs. They are caught between a rock and a hard place, with the weight of their constitutionally entrenched club heritage weighing down on all future aspirations.
The WRU will probably ultimately have to solve their poor internal governance problems for them, through amending the WRU’s own articles of association, limiting “designated regional organisations” from 2020 to either having no geographical brand or having an accurate geographical brand reflecting the full region. The other 4 regions, including RGC, will already fully comply from 1 July with such an obvious, sensible and impartial regional criteria.
As to what form of property re-development, in the context of Sir Terry Matthews’ new building and Labour Welsh Government backed and financially assisted International Convention Centre Wales at the Celtic Manor (link), and rather than another convention centre, the smart money remains on the Arms Park receiving a 90 degrees limited new stadium and with every bit of commercial and residential property redevelopment that can be got past the city planners and squeezed in around it. All talk of grandiose convention centres likely slowly dropped after the granting of any new lease.
The financial status of the regions was supposed to remain relatively stable until 2017-18, not that some of us were ever particularly confident even in 2014. For 2014, 2015 and 2016 would see each region receive a £900,000 loan across three tranches from the 300+ member clubs of the WRU. With repayment in 2017, 2018 and 2019. 1 September 2017 being the pivotal date, when the cash inflow would reverse into a cash outflow.
So it was disconcerting to see the regions posting such dreadful financial performances as early as 2015-16, especially the Cardiff Blues and the Scarlets who each posted a financial loss of around £1.5 million. As the Dragons will repay all their debt of £900,000 in full as part of the WRU takeover on 1 July, it will be interesting to see whether the other three regions each remit their first £325,000 to the WRU member clubs on 1 September 2017 without asking for an extension and without default. That will be the real business KPI in the summer of 2017, rather than any Pro12 title.
The goal of integrated North / South / East / West representative regions, each with season long “A” teams, and with a vibrant tribal semi-pro club game below them, remains a long way off.
But we will get there, or we will slowly die as a World Rugby Tier 1 rugby nation.