Posted by It was Thursday 29th August that France’s ProD2 got the 2024/25 season officially underway at the professional level in the northern hemisphere with Brive beating Oyonnax. Some 338 days later it finally came to an end as the British & Irish Lions lost their final game on tour against Australia.
In just two weeks pre-season kicks into life again across France and then starts taking in England and the United Rugby Championship countries, giving supporters a whole 14 days to enjoy some time away from rugby and a quick look at the off-field issues facing the game.
There’s the mess that the global calendar remains, whatever the hell EPCR are continuing to do with the European competitions, a proposed new R360 franchise league that nobody really knows anything about but apparently has unlimited funds, the new test level competition that seemingly closes the door on progression for tier two countries, and just generally ongoing financial issues across the sport.
Before any of that though Welsh fans have plenty to deal with at home as the Welsh Rugby Union uses August to begin a consultation phase on what form the professional club game in the country is going to take from the 2027/28 season onwards, or perhaps even 12 months earlier depending on what is decided and how easy it is to implement.
There’s not enough time in a two-week off-season to go over how we got here, in fact there’s barely enough time in a 50-week season to get through how the WRU have managed to so spectacularly fail at implementing professionalism in this country going all the way back to 1995, but we have now reached a point of seemingly no return.
The current state of play, in it’s plainest form, is that there are four teams and not enough money to get four to a competitive level while retaining somewhat equal funding. There are many who continue to campaign for four equally funded sides as their preference in order to preserve jobs, prevent supporters being left without clubs to support and ensure the national team has a sufficiently large player pool to choose from.
These are entirely reasonable arguments, but they are counteracted by the fact that remaining at four equally funded sides is also a path to the loss of jobs, to supporters being left without clubs to support and the national team not have a sufficiently large player pool to choose from as the four clubs would continue to operate with some of the lowest budgets in Europe without any notable success.
That lack of success at club level would continue to fail to sufficiently prepare players for test level rugby and lead to the ongoing woes that Cymru are experiencing. When the national team fails to perform then the money pot doesn’t fill up quickly enough, and when the money pot doesn’t fill up quickly enough then the professional club game suffers, which will eventually lead to the collapse of one or more clubs.
To my knowledge there has not been a plan presented by anyone in favour of continuing with four equally funded clubs that would see them and the national team thrive. The only way that could possibly happen would be if the WRU were to finally overhaul it’s governance and split the community and professional games, but that is as likely as Cardiff winning next season’s Champions Cup.
So what of the other options? Four teams could be retained on a 2+2 funding basis, prioritising two teams with bigger budgets and effectively relegating the other two to development sides. This could work from a financial standpoint, although there are question marks over whether the budget of the main two would be sufficient to properly be competitive, but the main question marks would over the lesser two.
Will benefactors be prepared to stump up significant sums of money to prop up a rugby team without a stated intention to win? Will sponsors come on board when the likelihood is they will not get exposure at the business end of top competitions? Will supporters continue to pay up and turn up to watch a team that will probably lose more games than they win? Key questions where the answers are probably “no”.
Instead three teams could be an option. An increase in playing budget for each, more opportunities at success for the clubs and subsequently for the national team with a concentration of talent while still offering a wide enough player pool for Steve Tandy to select from. Hopefully that would lead to a gradual level of improvement that will reverse the emptying of the money pot and begin to fill it up again.
However, the big sticking point with three is the organisers of the competitions that the teams might play in. It’s been reported that the URC are opposed to an odd number of teams being entered into the league from Wales, while if there are serious aims of one day joining an Anglo-Welsh League then the preference from across the Severn seems to also be two sides.
So now we reach two teams, with the major issue here being the simple fact that two teams makes it very difficult to properly staff the national team. With a maximum of 46 Welsh-qualified players taking the field across any given weekend the Cymru player pool would struggle to get enough men playing regularly to afford sufficient depth for a tilt at a Six Nations or Rugby World Cup.
Of course the two club teams would likely be significantly more competitive with much improved budgets and a serious concentration of talent, which could lead to a short-term boost in the fortunes of the national team, but Scotland and Italy are prime examples of the limited ceiling of a tier one test team operating with just two professional clubs in the country.
The only way two teams could be successful for Wales is if they were playing in an Anglo-Welsh League whereby they had purchased stakes in Premiership Rugby Limited (PRL) and negotiated the same player release as England, thereby effectively allowing Welsh players to play freely across any English club without any impact on their time in camp with Tandy.
Would anyone trust the WRU to deliver that seemingly best-of-a-bad-bunch scenario? I suspect the answer to that would be no.
It leaves supporters in another unenviable limbo going into the new season, increasingly fatigued by the never-ending botching of these discussions around new deals with “everything on the table”. I know I am completely fed up by it all and have reached the point now of just wanting to know the outcome and the direction of travel, whatever that may be.
From a Cardiff perspective there is little doubt that there will be professional rugby in Cardiff no matter whether it’s two, three or four teams that carry on. The question is whether that team will be Cardiff Rugby Club, some merger of Cardiff and Dragons, or a totally new “East Wales” entity created from scratch.
While I hope the Blue & Blacks remain at the top of the professional game, if it is either of the latter two scenarios then catch me full-time at the Rags getting pissed at grounds across Wales as they continue the nearly 150-year history of this great club solo.
Ultimately though there is a genuine concern there that no matter what route the WRU end up taking the professional club level down, that rugby in this country may be beyond saving. Glanmor Griffiths, Roger Lewis, Steve Phillips, what have you done? 30 years of incompetence. What a sorry state of affairs.
Cardiff Rugby Life 