Richard Collier-Keywood, the embattled chair of the Welsh Rugby Union, has insisted he has the support of fans and players in Wales as the WRU attempts to drive through radical plans to cut one of the four professional sides.
Giving evidence before the House of Commons Welsh affairs select committee, Collier-Keywood – who is facing the threat of a vote of no confidence in his leadership – said he believed “the rugby system was essentially broken” in Wales before he took over and there was widespread acknowledgment that it needed to change.
His evidence came on a day when a quartet of Welsh fan representatives testified before that same select committee that he was wrong.
Iwan Griffiths, from the Scarlets Supporters Trust, said a poll of their members had revealed that 90% were against the WRU’s proposals. Daniel Hallett, from the Dragons Supporters’ Club, said their own survey had shown “there is no appetite for a potential merger, there is no appetite for jumping ship to another team who have been historic rivals”.
“We recognise change is painful and we went into this understanding that this would be very painful for groups of supporters,” Collier-Keywood said. “But unfortunately the rugby system was broken, the pathways were broken, and we have announced an investment plan of £28m over five years to fix that problem.”
The plan proposes scrapping the Ospreys, given the region’s owners are the WRU’s preferred bidder for Cardiff, which the union has owned since the club went into administration.
Collier-Keywood and the WRU chief executive, Abi Tierney, believed the situation they had inherited was unsustainable because the WRU was in special financial measures. That meant the most pressing issue they faced was the need to refinance the WRU’s debts.
To do so, they needed to negotiate a new Professional Rugby Agreement, but the process had stalled because two regions, Scarlets and Ospreys, wanted more assurances over how the WRU planned to finance Cardiff. “We were going to fail,” Tierney said. “Sometimes one of the issues you face in leadership is that keeping going along the same path isn’t the right thing to do.”
Collier-Keywood argued that Welsh rugby is “starved of resources”, with the four teams subsisting on operational budgets that are only around half the size of some of their rivals in other countries.
Cutting one of the four regions is “the affordable way forward, and it is also the way forward that will allow our rugby to improve”, he claimed. “When we sat down as a board and looked at the rugby players we had in the system who were Welsh, we didn’t feel we had enough for four teams.”
The existing four had been employing “around 30 non-Welsh players”, which he described as “frankly a waste of money in the longer term”.
Tierney also denied that the WRU was facing any real threat of an Extraordinary General Meeting, even after Central Glamorgan Rugby Union recently wrote to clubs asking for their support holding a vote of no confidence in Collier-Keywood. “We haven’t received anything from the community clubs,” Tierney said, “and we haven’t yet had any call for an EGM.”
Central Glamorgan would need the support of around 30 of the 300 clubs in Wales to force an EGM.
