WRU to apologise to women's players but deny sexism over contract chaos

The Welsh Rugby Union says it intends to apologise to its women’s team players following contractual discussions which descended into chaos earlier this year.

In September, the governing body announced that 37 of its elite female players had signed fresh professional contracts, stating the deal was one of the most lucrative in the women’s game.

But the manner in which the negotiations was conducted has now been the subject of the WRU’s latest review.

After a long-standing impasse in talks, WRU chair Richard Collier-Keywood received a letter from the women’s squad voicing its concerns in early August.

This came after the squad was set a three-hour deadline by the WRU executive to sign their new deals or risk being pulled out of matches, which in turn would have jeopardised the team’s qualification for next year’s Rugby World Cup.

The executive has since apologised to the board for this and accepted it was an error.

Collier-Keywood told a press conference on Friday, 1 November: "It is our intention to sit down properly with the players over the course of the next couple of weeks and to deliver the apologies necessary.

"It is absolutely clear that we do need to apologise. We just need to get the logistics of that right, because the players are in all different parts of the country."

After receiving the letter, Collier-Keywood called for a review of the process to be set up immediately and chief executive Abi Tierney took over the negotiations.

The review was led by WRU board members Claire Donovan and Alison Thorne, an independent director.

More than 50 hours of conversations are said to have taken place with individuals involved in the process, including members of the playing group.

Spelling out her assessment of the situation, Thorne said all parties wanted to "deliver more for women's rugby in Wales. It's just that everybody had very different views as to what that entailed."

Thorne said there are a number of "pivotal moments" that have been identified in the report, which the WRU intends to release in full. These moments, along with a lack of effective communication, "created heightened emotions and poor behaviour manifested itself from most of the parties at different stages".

Collier-Keywood added: "Undoubtedly, this is reputationally damaging for us.

"I think it's important that people judge us on the basis of having seen the full report, though, and the causes behind this and then what we're doing about them.

"We acknowledge we're not perfect. There's a long road ahead of us in terms of trying to improve what we do.

"This is not a good day for us in relation to that. We totally accept that we should have done better and we didn't."

While the WRU accepts it failed at various stages of the process, Collier-Keywood refuted allegations of sexism.

Donovan, a former Wales international with 75 caps to her name, added: "When we reflect on all of the conversations we had, it [sexism] didn't come out from any party and particularly didn't come out in conversations with the players."

Thorne concluded: "The word sexism didn't come up at all. So the word itself was never used.

"We stepped back and said that when we look at the issues or symptoms of behaviour, would we have concluded that it was sexism? And we said not, so there’s nothing in our report that refers to sexism."

When asked if the role of Nigel Walker - the WRU's executive director of rugby - was now untenable, Tierney said: "The board will be considering everything on Tuesday. We're working and talking really closely with Nigel. He acknowledges that we needed to have done things better."

Meanwhile, the Welsh Government labelled the allegations "concerning" and said it would seek to meet with the WRU "as a matter of urgency".

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