LONG READ 'Cooperation, not blame': Welsh rugby must learn from Cardiff crisis

Welsh rugby has always loved the blame game. You could argue it loves the game of blame more than the game of rugby. Finger pointing is one of the core skills you need to survive here so when Cardiff Rugby entered administration last week, the pointy digits were out and poking in the direction of everyone who had ever glanced at a Gilbert size five.

A capital city club hitting the skids struck a new low for professional rugby in Wales. There had been whispers of brewing financial issues for about three months, but few thought the disaster would actually transpire – it was like Donald Trump getting re-elected.

Fury was aimed first at Cardiff Rugby then the WRU. It soon spread further, and social media looked like Gangs of New York, but with emojis, not hatchets. Some supporters wanted to know why Cardiff were being ‘saved’ when other teams hadn’t been. Others rubbed Halen Mon salt into the wound by asking why North Wales still couldn’t have a fully professional region, if the WRU were prepared to throw more money after Cardiff.

The reality is, this is a largely blameless situation. A fact plenty in Welsh rugby will find hard to accept. It doesn’t fit the bleak narrative from which many like to make capital. The main issue was that two key investors said they would put in money and to varying degrees didn’t (the author of this column is being deliberately vague here, because he doesn’t want to end up in some kind of administration himself).

That those investors didn’t put up the cash is no-one’s fault but the actual investors’ themselves. The deal had been independently vetted by a third-party company – a company which checks the validity of investors as its core business. Cardiff Rugby and the WRU trusted this company, as anyone would, to ‘cross the Ts’ and ‘dot the Is’ – as it turned out the investors may have ended up taking the ‘P’.

This whole episode isn’t just a lesson in apportioning blame, it’s an example of where a positive approach is far more productive than a negative one. The WRU have been very supportive in all of this. They have of course stopped Cardiff Rugby from going out of business, but more than that, been very proactive.

The usual reaction to this stuff online is that anyone involved should be sacked and then sacked again – and then also sack their first-born child for good measure.

Anecdotally, people have been impressed, not just in a cold financial way, but almost with the warmth with which the whole thing has been handled. As disastrous as the situation looked for 48 hours, it was resolved incredibly smoothly. In a scenario that looked every bit like Welsh rugby’s version of the Titanic, there was a lifeboat for everyone, the boats made it to shore, and the band carried on playing in a hotel lobby somewhere.

This new approach across Welsh rugby’s collective finances will hopefully continue. The blame culture will only get you so far. The usual reaction to this stuff online is anyone involved should be sacked and then sacked again – and then also sack their first-born child for good measure. But that isn’t particularly helpful. What is required is an appreciation of how much money there is in Welsh rugby and for those key decision makers to work within those parameters.

The days of wealthy benefactors are gone. Those people don’t exist anymore, especially not in Wales, and the desperate search for them is very unproductive. The ‘old rich white guys’ were only successful in rugby when you could buy a club in 1996 for four quid and then win the Heineken Cup with another fiver thrown on top. Rugby isn’t like that anymore, and this whole obsession with getting wealthy investors is unrealistic – especially in a country with population of just 3 million people.

While we’re at it, the word ‘investor’ needs to be ditched from the rugby lexicon, because it isn’t financially accurate. A financial investment is defined as the “allocation of funds, usually money, to an asset or portfolio with the goal of generating returns over time”. That does not describe professional club rugby anywhere in the world at the moment.

Even in leagues where money is still perceived to be sloshing around, it isn’t. In last season’s Top 14, the league recorded a €64.5m operating loss – more than double the pre-lockdown five-year average. The Top 14 is further evidence (if needed) that no matter how much money the sport derives from TV revenues, it’ll spend it and then some. The French league is the next bubble waiting to burst.

We digress. Wales is a small country with small rugby budgets. No finger pointing will change that. Yes, cuts and savings can be made here and there (and should), but they are never going to deliver budgets that can compete with the bigger teams in Europe – and nor should they.

This month the WRU announced it was making £5m in savings which can then be pumped back into the game. The savings range from not spending £50,000 a year on flowers, to losing up to 20 jobs. And while losing jobs is never an easy option, when organisations need to cut costs that’s usually how it’s done – in part at least.

If the past few weeks have taught us anything in Welsh rugby, it’s that working together is far more beneficial than working against each other.

If the past few weeks have taught us anything in Welsh rugby, it’s that working together is far more beneficial than working against each other, and the reliance on wealthy backers simply isn’t a long-term strategy.

Cardiff Rugby working together with the WRU delivered. It saved professional rugby in Cardiff and secured its position for the next generation of supporters. What’s happened over the past few weeks shouldn’t feel like a celebratory moment, but in some ways, it has been.

Well done to all of those involved. It couldn’t have been easy.