WRU set out targets as five-year plan revealed
WRU chair Richard Collier-Keywood speaks with ITV Cymru Wales sports reporter Matt Southcombe.
The Welsh Rugby Union has laid out its five-year targets with the launch of a ‘One Wales’ strategy.
Following a six-month external consultation with Portas Analysis, the WRU has spelled out where it wants to be long-term after one of the toughest seasons on the field since the game went regional in 2003.
This season, the men’s and women’s senior teams both finished last in the Six Nations, with Warren Gatland’s side failing to win a match.
The men’s under-20s team finished fifth in their tournament, while the Ospreys were the only team to reach the knockout stages of the United Rugby Championship. The other three regions all finished in the bottom five of the league.
The new document - titled One Wales: Welsh Rugby Strategy 2024-29 - states that the WRU wants the men’s and women’s senior teams to be in the top five in the world and competing at the semi-final stage of the 2027 and 2029 World Cups.
It also hopes the professional clubs will be “regularly” competing in the play-off stages of the domestic league.
In a press release, the WRU says it will “review every facet of the professional game, with the ambition to make progressive choices which will challenge all that has gone before”.
Under consideration are options relating to how the regions are funded. For example, two regions could receive more funding than the other two in order to make them more competitive domestically.
Another option could be to significantly fund one region more than all the others, forming a kind of "super-club".
All options would be difficult to push through and any region receiving less funding than another would likely push back.
But it is perhaps better than the alternative, which is perhaps one ceasing to exist altogether.
"All the options are on the table," WRU chair Richard Collier-Keywood told ITV Cymru Wales.
"But where we've got to so far is that if you look at the pathway size of this, so the desire to get and harness the best of Welsh rugby talent together, the right answer for that is four regions.
"And that's our position today. And of course, we're looking to see whether we have the finances to deliver that going forward.”
With regards to the women’s game, the WRU outlines an ambition to “deliver a compelling competition offering for elite Welsh players”. Currently, Wales’ top players ply their trade at English clubs in the PWR (Premiership Women’s Rugby) league.
The finances in Welsh rugby are a hot topic and they have been challenging since the Covid pandemic.
The WRU admitted today that it was operating in a £15million deficit throughout previous years.
Collier-Keywood explained the previous WRU regime sold a portion of its stake held in the URC and Six Nations to cover the deficit, a decision he would not have taken were he presented with the opportunity today.
"At the moment we have issues of finances," he said.
"We've inherited a difficult financial situation and we're not able to put as much money as we'd like to into our regional game.
"We're involved in a process to look at how we put more money into that regional game to make sure it's successful, and that of course is the feeder for the Welsh national team.”
After a tough 2023/24 season, the regions’ budgets will be shrinking further next term to a salary cap of £4.5million per side, which leaves them lagging millions behind the top spenders in their league.
The WRU’s strategy will spring into action next summer, but could things be about to get worse before they get better?
“Frankly, it's difficult to see how, from a results perspective, it can get any worse,” Collier-Keywood said.
“So no, I'm absolutely hoping for an improvement next year, and I think that our hope is based on improved action on talent pathways, improved integration of coaching between what we're doing from the elite men's squad and into the regions and also between the regions and the communities.”
Wales’ four pro teams - Cardiff, Dragons, Ospreys and Scarlets - are also still saddled with the repayment of a loan the WRU took out during the Covid pandemic to keep them afloat, along with the sky-high interest rate that comes with it.
But the WRU is preparing "a clearly defined and followed debt strategy with a ‘One Wales’ approach” and one of the stated objectives is to “restructure debt and consider other funding methods to allow investment into rugby”.
Also among their stated aims is an improved relationship between the union and the regions. This desire is nothing new but an improved working relationship has failed to materialise in the past and meaningful change has never come to pass.
But Collier-Keywood insists there are already tangible examples of the new joined-up approach.
“The end goal here is not an improved relationship,” he said. “The improved relationship is a means to an end which is to increase the success of regional and national rugby in Wales.
“So a tangible example of that would be we've worked collaboratively with the regions to work out what it would take - benchmarking other clubs, sides in other tier one nations - what it would take for our regional teams to be competitive in the URC.
“We've done that together. We now have that information, that data, and we're working towards how we deliver that together with the regions.”
That benchmarking exercise led to an estimate that over the next five years, there is a £35million funding gap between where the pro teams currently sit and the level of investment required for each of them to be successful.
The WRU’s strategy will aim to bridge that gap.
But the document released today only states what the WRU is aiming to achieve. It has no detail on what action it intends to take.
The organisation’s top brass insist a fuller picture will be delivered in the autumn, but Welsh rugby fans will likely be sceptical until some meat is put on the bones. Shiny new strategic plans and external consultations are nothing new for the game in Wales, but substantial change rarely followed on previous occasions.
It led Welsh rugby to the brink of collapse last season, with Wales players threatening to go on strike ahead of the WRU’s biggest money-maker - Wales v England in the Six Nations - over regional contract issues, and a review published in November 2023 finding that sexism, misogyny, racism and homophobia were not properly challenged at the WRU.
“We're obviously making changes now,” Collier-Keywood concluded. “We hope some of those changes will feed their way through relatively quickly, but it takes time to turn around the business.
“It takes time to invest in new areas of income, it takes time to improve the facilities and to generate more income.”
He added: “We recognise our responsibility to fans all across Wales. We're working diligently to improve the business side and rugby side of the WRU.”
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