Before the start of his last Six Nations with Wales this year, Warren Gatland reflected on how they would do without him in 2020. A feature of his 12 years as the national head coach has been his ability to consistently get his players to rise above the general mediocrity of the country’s four regions who, since their inception in 2003, have lurched from one financial and political struggle to the next.
“It has been challenging at times,” said Gatland, a week before Wales began their campaign with a victory in Paris. “I’m a bit wary of where Wales are going to go in the future and what is going to happen. We need the regions to be successful by competing in Europe and the Pro14. Ireland are benefitting from the performances of their provinces and Wales need the regions to be doing that. There is no doubt that we are punching massively above our weight.”
Six weeks later, as Gatland prepared his side, the only one in the Six Nations to have a chance of winning the grand slam, to face Scotland at Murrayfield on Saturday, he was hit by a familiar burst of turbulence. A plan to shake up the regions by getting two to merge to create an opening for one in north Wales dissolved into acrimony, leaving players who should have been focusing solely on Scotland concerned about their futures and those of their regional teammates.
The Wales captain, Alun Wyn Jones, is among 24 players out of contract with Ospreys this summer, the region whose putative merger with the Scarlets collapsed this week; Cardiff Blues have had to delay announcing the signings of the Wales wing Josh Adams from Worcester and Hallam Amos from the Dragons because budgets for next season still have to be agreed, the same reason the Scarlets cannot confirm new deals with the Wales prop Rob Evans and the wing Johnny McNicholl.
At the start of the decade, the regions felt the Welsh Rugby Union was undermining them in the hope they all collapsed and could then be taken over on the cheap. The administration has changed since then and relations have improved considerably. The union is not being coercive in its approach this time: the merger idea was formed after two of the regions last year reported financial difficulties and the WRU left it to the four to sort out.
With the WRU anticipating a tough financial year in 2019, which will contain no autumn internationals because of the World Cup, it is not in a position to bail out anyone; and it prefers a long-term solution to a short-term fix. The Ospreys were the only one of the four to proactively consider a merger, approaching both the Blues and the Scarlets but finding neither willing to concede enough ground to prevent a deal from effectively becoming a takeover.
The Ospreys embraced the regional concept from the outset, unlike the Blues and the Dragons who are effectively the Cardiff and Newport clubs of old having made little attempt at integration, leaving the Rhondda and Gwent valleys virtually unrepresented in the professional game. The Dragons were taken over by the WRU in 2017 to stave off collapse and the union was later approached by the Blues. A deal collapsed because agreement could not be reached to write off loans.
The Ospreys are vulnerable because they do not own their own ground. They pay £1m a year in rent at the Liberty Stadium and their only income on a match day comes through ticket sales, which have been declining. As London Irish found on their last two stints in the Premiership, the lack of a ground to be able to commercially exploit during the week, together with an absence of income from catering, makes a club too reliant on central income. The Ospreys have survived through benefactors, but such support is finite.
“It comes down to being able to put enough resources and finances into the game,” said Gatland this week. “A huge amount of money goes into the four regions and the union has a responsibility not just to them but to the whole of the game. The agreement going forward is the union is going to put more money into the regions, but by all accounts, it is going to lose £6m this year.
“I can see a region in north Wales as being a massive positive. There are one million people there and a number of businesses. If we can promote the game in the area, I see it long-term as a real benefit. We have probably hampered ourselves in the past by the proximity of some of our regions and their vying for the same fans and sponsors. We are all aware that our crowds aren’t big enough; they need to grow to help promote the game and to fund it, so a team in north Wales might be a positive outcome for Welsh rugby.”
Gatland allowed the politics to play out during the start of the week, but in the latter half told his players to focus solely on Murrayfield. Had Wales started the Six Nations like Scotland, motivation might have been an issue, but the lure of a grand slam and the confidence developed by 12 consecutive victories mean the Scots are unlikely to profit from the domestic skirmishing.
And the players seem to grow a few inches taller when they go into camp with Wales. That is down to Gatland who, from the moment he took charge after the ruinous 2007 World Cup campaign, created a sense of self-belief through hard work and trust. Which is why the WRU is concerned about what will happen when he goes after the World Cup when success may have to come from the bottom up rather than the top down.
