DUMB AND DUMBER. A DESCRIPTION OF THE WELSH RUGBY UNION BOARD.
The Unacceptable Invisible Faces of Welsh Rugby's Incompetent Management
Bill Walsh, the legendary three time Superbowl winning coach of the San Francisco 49ers once said “ Innovation involves anticipation. It is having a broad base of knowledge on your subject and an ability to see where the end game is headed. Use all your knowledge to get there first. Set the trend and make the competition counter you.” Such wisdom when applied to the current predicament of Welsh rugby appears to be totally ignored by those individuals charged with the responsibility of running the Welsh Rugby Union, once a world leader in sports administration in the 1960s and 70s, but today reduced to a rotten, rudderless, woke carcass of its former glory.
The business of the Welsh Rugby Union is rugby. This was clearly understood by previous generations who in 1964 became laser focused on improving the win record of the Welsh national team, and launched a comprehensive revolution of Welsh Rugby by embracing coaching structures that yielded the great Welsh teams from 1969 to 1981.
Following a humbling 26-3 defeat to the Springboks in the summer of 1964 (sound familiar?) under massive pressure from the clubs and the Western Mail, the WRU convened a working party under Cliff Jones as Chairman. A Welsh outside half of the 1930s, described as a genius by Wilf Wooller, a great all-round athlete himself who played cricket for Glamorgan, soccer for Cardiff City and rugby for Cardiff and Wales, Cliff Jones had spent 22 years as a Welsh selector, 5 years as Chairman of “the big 5” as they were known. He brought into his working group a young generation of rugby driven men who together would transform the Welsh game. Key amongst this group were Alun Thomas (manager on the South Africa tour), Clive Rowlands (captain of the Welsh team 1963 to 1965), Carwyn James, David Nash, Ieuan Evans (who coached me at Aberytwyth University), Alun Pask, Brian Price, Dai Hayward, Roy Bish and Derek Morgan who, oddly enough, became an England selector.
The outcome was the decision and recruitment of a National Coaching Organiser Ray Williams, who became the fundamental building block of Welsh Rugby in the late 1960s and 1970s. Ray laid down the railway tracks by publishing outstanding coaching manuals and strength and fitness programmes developed by Ieuan Evans at Aberystwyth University that coaches across Wales and the rest of the world would follow. The key decision, guided by Cliff Jones and Alun Thomas was the appointment in 1968 of Clive Rowlands as coach of the Welsh team, nicknamed “Top Cat”, an extraordinary motivator who, in his pre-match diatribes invoked every known influence from past tradition and the family down to distant relatives, girlfriends and his trump card, the Welsh people. Apart from being a master of emotive appeal, Clive was the shrewdest judge of a player. He always professed that his principal job as coach was to give the players so much confidence that they could not lose. He left important legacies, not least his belief that the team talk should be given some four hours before the game and never in the dressing room. He thought that the coach should be young enough to be more closely involved with the players, and that this gave him more authority. He believed in a 15 man game despite being the high priest of the 9 man kicking game (at Murrayfield he once kicked the ball 111 times into touch, with his fly half Dai Watkins touching the ball only 6 times in the match, Wales winning 6-0!)
So in 1964 the WRU General Committee , equivalent to today’s Board took decisive action to search for a solution to restore winning and glory to Welsh rugby, and it succeeded. In 2007 after a disastrous Rugby World Cup in France the WRU took decisive action by sacking the coach, Gareth Jenkins, and appointing swiftly on November 9th, a successor in Warren Gatland who restored Wales’ reputation over the next 12 years. He guided Wales to 4 Six Nations titles and 3 Grand Slams, reaching the RWC semi-finals in 2011 and 2019. What will today’s Board chaired by Richard Collier-Keywood do to resurrect the fortunes of Welsh Rugby that today is at the nadir of all nadirs with 12 straight defeats in a year where Wales lost every international game played?
I’m sure Richard Collier-Keywood is an outstanding auditor and chartered accountant with his impressive CV, and knows how to manage organisations a lot bigger than the £100 million WRU given his previous experience as managing partner of Price Waterhouse Coopers in the UK. But what does he know about rugby? Not much…as he admitted on Sunday to a BBC Wales interviewer.
Let’s turn to the next public face of the WRU. Abi Tierney was appointed CEO in January 2024. To say that to date her tenure has been Liz Trusslike is giving plaudits to that idiotic incompetent ex prime minister. Tierney arrived at a moment when focus was on the sexism, scandal culture that had festered in the WRU (for God knows how long), covid induced debts foisted by the WRU on the 4 Regions and a realisation that the turnover of the Union needed to grow sharply with a more focused commercial approach combined with more disciplined control over operational costs which were spiralling. Bizarrely the WRU did not appoint an entrepreneurial creative force as its new CEO. Instead it played it safe by appointing another quangoland queen with no real commercial exposure outside managing the greasy pole politics of public sector procurement contracts with Serco. Interestingly a search of Companies House did not reveal any outside directorship in her name.Is this because she has no entrepreneurial talents or commercial/financing skills usually associated with experienced CEOs?
The chief criticism of her current performance has to be the failure to publish the much vaunted strategy plan titled bizarrely, “One Wales”. I never knew that there were two, three or even ten Wales…..As a slogan for nationalism, it’s more Plaid Cymru than Welsh Rugby Union. Tierney announced her strategy in June, but it turned out to be a bullet point wishlist linked to consultancyspeak babble. It’s too painful to quote. If you’ve got five minutes to waste, Google it.
So who else is on the Board that will receive the plethora of reviews and reports over coming weeks? Which non-exec will have the balls or chutzpah to spill the beans at the risk of losing their non-exec director fee? Collier-Keywood and Tierney have quickly learnt the Welsh art of obfuscation and blame avoidance via the well trod mechanism of referring issues to a sub-committee who passes the buck to a sub sub committee. Or call it a Review. Already the two of them have announced that the Review into the Welsh team playing performance shambles overseen by Warren Gatland as head coach will not be published. It will join the multitude of reviews and reports commissioned by the WRU that remain as secret as the KGB files in the Kremlin.
Jennifer Mathias is a non- exec who is the Group Financial Officer at Rathbones Group, a £1.2 billion wealth management fund. Perhaps she can help the new CFO restructure the WRU balance sheet to optimise its debt gearing that would allow more funding available to invest in the playing side of the game. At present the WRU has relatively low debt on its balance sheet. Remember the business of the WRU is rugby..
Andrew Williams is a proven, successful business executive. He transformed Halma Plc, a global health and environmental technology group into a £10 billion group. He has experience of rugby club management having served as a non-exec for Cardiff Rugby. He should be asking the right questions.
Alison Thorne is a non-exec unlikely to be much of a thorn in the side of the executive directors. She was Chair of the National Dance Co Wales, and Chair of Barcud Housing Association…“creating inclusive organisations is her key aim”. In rugby management terms she’s as much use as a ballet dancer playing tight head prop. She seems to be a fully paid up member of the Cardiff centric Tafia freemasonry and is the public face of wokeness on the WRU. How much is she paid?
Amanda Bennett is an experienced women’s ex- rugby player with Saracens and Wales. However she is another quango queen working in UKSport and FairPlay Enterprises, and outside her rugby experience adds little to the Board. She should be working pro bono to help the community game in Wales which is amateur.
Jamie Roberts is one of Wales’ most distinguished players from the first Warren Gatland era with 94 Welsh caps and two British Lions tours. He has a degree in medicine from Cardiff University and is currently pursuing a medical career as well as becoming one of the foremost television pundits on the game. He has the intellect and charisma to become the next Chairman or CEO of the WRU. He would bring a rugby emphasis and new energy to the moribund institution that he now serves as a non-exec. He would set the tone from the top, and hopefully bring in other intelligent, committed and, competitive rugby people to run the union. Maybe convince Dan Biggar to take the head coaching role by moving Gatland upstairs to a Director of Rugby role. Wales needs a new younger generation to take control. Look at what the French have achieved under Fabien Galthie’ and William Servat, assisted of course by the highly respected Sean Edwards. Wales have talented coaches to come back to Wales, Steve Tandy is the Scottish defence coach. Robbie McBride is coaching the Leinster forwards. It’s time for some radical realignment. Today’s Dan Biggar is yesterday’s Clive Rowlands.
Malcolm Wall, a former Chairman of the Harlequins, provides the Board with extensive TV and media experience having chaired three media companies. He is currently the Chairman of the Professional Rugby Board, established to represent the interests of the 4 regions, but has been invisible in recent weeks as the WRU fail to negotiate a long term deal with them. Inside sources say he has turned out to be a real disappointment, allowing cracks to emerge in the 4 club concensus, and is now perceived as a weak voice on the WRU board as the representative of the 4 professional regions. He has struggled to argue the case of the regions that the remaining Covid loan debt should be absorbed by the WRU who only fronted the UK government loan for the purpose of scale. The WRU has abused the financial position of the regions ever since their creation. The WRU acts as a clearing house for all professional club competition TV and media revenues. Monies that should be paid direct to the regions (who receive less than they should because of the WRU skim off the top) is unacceptable and, frankly verging on dishonest. I know of one long standing debt of around £5million that one region carried on its balance sheet for years.Reluctantly it was forced through circumstances to write it off due to a change of ownership, but this liability still exists even if it is off balance sheet.
With the exception of the Dragons who the WRU owned and operated with extreme incompetence despite pumping double the cash the 3 other regions received, I suspect that both Cardiff Rugby and Scarlets have longstanding claims against the WRU.
Wall was supposed to clean up the messy relationships between the four disparate regions and the WRU. Frankly from the regions point of view he has failed miserably, trying to foist a blatantly unfair agreement on each club to transfer £14 million of covid loans to the WRU balance sheet in return for a 20% equity stake in each region and allow direct control over individual players game time, training regimes, diet and position selection. This is akin to the Welsh soccer team manager, Craig Bellamy managing the selections of players at Swansea City and Cardiff City; it would be never happen! Unbelievably, such is their financial weakness, 3 of the 4 regions were prepared to go along with this leveraged blackmail. I detect the sinister hand in the background of Warren Gatland in this old fashioned shake down. It is the financial asphyxia caused by the WRU jackboot on the throats of the regions that pressured the Scarlets, Cardiff and Dragons to go along with the play. But the Jedi force is still with the Ospreys, so chapeau and bravo to them for rejecting this clumsy attempt at blackmail.
The WRU should take back this debt that it cynically manipulated with the connivance of the Labour dominated Welsh government who financed the loan from a lending facility it had in place with the UK Government’s Treasury at zero interest. However, in true Shylock Merchant of Venice opportunism, the Welsh government charged the WRU, and by transfer, the 4 regions, 8% interest on the loan. In 2020 the then £18million loan was transferred to NatWest Bank, but the regions were stuffed with a 3% over Base rate interest rate. This compares to what the English RFU did, which is to charge its clubs with a fixed 2% rate. This is a classic example of the WRU contempt for the 4 regions, and the ‘dumb and dumber’ culture that is so pervasive in the institution.
The other members of the Board are classical hangovers from the amateur era. Colin Wilks, Chris Jones, John Manders, Claire Donovan are all dedicated community rugby lifers who represent the game at the amateur level, and the question is do they ever raise their voices?
So how does this Board demonstrate real vision and anticipation? Or is it best to scrap it and replace the consultant talk with rugby talk? This Travelling Rugby Gentleman proposes a Merlin’s Potion for future success:
1. The business of the WRU is rugby. Appoint rugby people to run the affairs of Welsh Rugby.
2. Start by appointing Jamie Roberts as CEO, and find roles for people like Sam Warburton, Gwyn Jones, Alun Wyn-Jones.
3. Appoint Dan Biggar, an articulate, intellectually clever, experienced, ultra competitive individual in the Clive Rowlands mould as Head Coach. Remember that when appointed in 1968, Clive was still captain and playing scrum-half for Swansea RFC.
4. Ask Warren Gatland to become a Director of Rugby, taking on the Ray Williams mantle by reorganising the coaching talent in Wales. He can appoint a rugby high performance coach with the authority to develop and refine the pathways of next generation playing talent. To give the WRU some credit, they are currently working hard on this aspect, i.e. the 60 young talent programme announced last week.
5. Ring fence the 3 main, separate activities that the WRU manages;
The professional game;
The community game;
The women’s game
6. Scrap the ridiculous “Caps Rule” that acts as a quality prevention measure currently penalising the Welsh team selection. Players must be permitted to carry out their chosen profession of being a pro rugby player, and should be allowed to play wherever they choose, especially as the earnings window is age limited. Teams like South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and especially Argentina have scrapped their “Caps Rule”. They rely on the World Rugby edict that dictates players release from club duties during designated international playtime windows. Head coaches of national teams simply have to learn to plan their coaching during these international calendars. Gatland and others like Scott Robertson of New Zealand are constantly whingeing about the need for players to spend more time together in training camp. They must learn to adapt their coaching techniques to the reality of international windows. They forget that clubs pay the salaries of their players.
7. Improve the quality of the executive and main board. Provide professional support to the rugby people in the fields of finance, marketing, PR, event management and media rights negotiations.
8. Finally, review the allocation of funds and financial support to each of the 3 main activities outlined above.
The professional game is where the focus should be. As the ex-UCLA Bruins football coach “Red Sanders” memorably said, “ Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing”. The WRU must provide a competitive level of funding to the 4 regional teams who provide the WRU with the players ready to play test match rugby. The business model that rugby union has adopted since 1995 prioritises international rugby to generate the largest % of overall revenues. Welsh rugby must have 4 extremely competitive teams. Cardiff, Dragons, Ospreys and the Scarlets need to be funded properly. At least £9 million per year starting in 2025. This represents £36 million of the £102 million turnover announced in the 2024 accounts of the WRU. It is around 33 % of turnover. The 2023 allocation from the WRU was £35.5million but cut in 2024 to £28.7 million. This an example of dumb and dumber. It’s utter madness and delusional to cut funding to the clubs that provide the players to the Welsh team. The animals seem to have taken over the zoo…. again. In other pro sports which are salary capped, like the NFL, around 50% of each franchise revenues is allocated to paying players. In addition the WRU should cease its money laundering operation which skims off the top of media revenues. It should pay over the entire £7.8 million of European and URC competitors revenues generated by the 4 clubs participation.
The other 2 main activities require funding allocation. The community game in Wales represented by the 300 or so amateur clubs received £11 million in 2024. The amount spent on women’s rugby is another Kremlin secret.There are current rumours that this board plans to spend £30 million on the women’s game overwhelming next 5 years. I ask the question, how much revenue does the women’s game actually generate today? The WRU should be balancing the books on a nett cash basis for an activity that is growing but still miniscule in comparison to the men’s game. The results from the women’s game are as bad as the men, but with a tiny talent pool of genuine athletes. Until women’s rugby can make a positive cash contribution to WRU coffers, it is obvious that any speculative investment into women’s rugby should be postponed for, say, 5 years. Let female executives run the women’s game in Wales, grow clubs from grassroots, secure its own revenue streams from sponsorship, selling media rights and from match day event income from ticket sales and hospitality.
There remains one last priority to consider. The WRU needs to grow the revenue line at an achievable growth rate. Not by hiking up tickets prices, but by negotiating more lucrative media rights sales. To achieve this the 6 Nations need more aggressive negotiators to improve the current TV contracts. The new Nations Cup competition that will replace the Summer and Autumn international Series has to yield a significant increase in broadcast and streaming revenues. Collective bargaining amongst the 12/14 countries involved will not be easy. Already the English have vetoed the £800million offered by Qatar who wanted to host the finals in Doha. The dumb and dumber culture exists within the RFU as well. Already there are leaks over the RFU’s intransigence over the % allocations amongst participants. The southern hemisphere countries are unhappy with the RFU’s intransigence that it should receive the lion’s share,which is supported by some other European unions.
I suggest that the WRU aims for a minimum 5% annual increase in revenue over the next 5 years. This would yield :
2025 —£107.8m; 2026 —£113.2m; 2027‐—£118.9m; 2028—-£124.8m; 2027—-£131.0.
This growth of £28.3m over the 5 year period is the key to unlocking the current financial pressures on the WRU.We should also factor in a stable cost base with inflation in line with the Labour government’s macroeconomics outlook at around 2.25%. The WRU should therefore absorb immediately all the outstanding covid loans of £14 million from the 4 regions. This would provide instant relief, negating the current blackmail demand of each region giving up 20% of its equity for such a write-off. This outrageous demand is nonsense. As noted earlier, I detect the nefarious hand of Warren Gatland in this attempt to allow the WRU deathstar to interfere with four independently owned businesses. The PRA should clearly tell the WRU to cease and desist from this blackmail play and write off the loans immediately. Give the regions some oxygen to breathe. Malcolm Wall needs to be more vocal in his direct support of the regions.
Vince Lombardi, winner of NFL Championship titles including the first two Superbowls said, “ The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge but rather is a lack of will ”. My message to the WRU board is, on the count of determination we will not be found wanting. Winners never quit and quitters never win.