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As we know, the Welsh Rugby Union are about to enter consultation over the restructuring of the professional game in Wales. It feels like something that has been happening non-stop for the last 10 years. The expected outcome of this, if rumours are to believed, is the closure of not one but two of the Regions currently competing in the United Rugby Championship. The justification will be that splitting resources two ways instead of four will lead to Welsh Rugby becoming more successful. Meanwhile fans, players and coaches are in a state of heightened paranoia mixed with ever deepening despair.
If the WRU public relations department had a word of the week, it would have been “contempt” since the turn of the century. For a prime example of the contempt the union is capable of, look no further than the women’s game, whose own reforms they ‘paused’ to focus on the men’s game. 50% of the population: bottom of the priorities list.
That same contempt is rife throughout the organisation. Fans have known about the discussions to cut regions for months. However, rather than being open and honest, the WRU have drip-fed information to the public over a period of months via the one and only outlet with dedicated regular coverage of Welsh rugby, whose lead journalist has been actively campaigning for regions to be cut and the URC to be abandoned for years. Prior statements have been walked back and recent commitments have been totally abandoned. Now, the fans have had enough.
Regional fans may be the WRUs minority of customersncompared to international fans, but they are their best customers. One corporate client may spend more on a box for a single game than a regional fan spends in an entire season, but that client will not buy up a range of merch, form the readership of a website, make a clip go viral on social media or host dedicated podcasts promoting the game every single week.
Regional rugby fans are the ones who are guaranteed to turn up or tune in every single week and spend their money, sometimes in large quantities, on rugby. To call them die-hards is underselling them, based on how much adversity they have had to put up with since the regions were created 22 years ago. If the WRU closes down a team that they have invested so heavily in, both financially and emotionally, they will walk away and they will not come back.
We have proof of this all around us. In England we have seen 3 Premiership clubs close down. However, if you go to the Premiership final at Twickenham, you will still see their jerseys being worn proudly by the fans that were left behind. They haven’t switched to new clubs, forgotten the past and moved on. They have been lost along with their clubs - they are sporting zombies.
At least in England the fans can tell themselves it was irresponsible owners that killed their clubs. If it is the WRU that pulls the trigger on a region, its fans will not only turn their back on whatever comes in it’s place but anything that bears the three feathers altogether, and that includes team Wales. Welsh fans have already tuned out of the British & Irish Lions thanks to no representation, the same will happen to some regional fans if they feel cast aside by the union. It will hurt them, tear them apart even, but they will never forgive.
For more proof, we only need to look back to 2003 when regionalisation first came in and the historic clubs were pushed aside. A huge portion of Welsh rugby fans never bought into the idea. They were backed by noisy protestors not only in the media but the governance of the game itself who constantly undermined the regions in public. Thus, giant swathes of fans walked away from the club game altogether.
The WRU clearly does not care about regional fans. They will look Wales Men’s test matches with draw crowds of 70,000 and regional matches that draw crowds of 5,000 and deem those fans to be acceptable losses. So long as team Wales are winning, they will reason, the fans will turn up. But they won’t. Fans are already all over social media saying they are ready to quit. WhatsApp groups full of people saying this is the last straw. Some even say they will start supporting English clubs instead.
Trying to con fans by re-naming the remaining regions will never work. Wales is a small place, but already many refuse to support clubs playing less than half an hour from their front door due to entrenched historical rivalries. If a team wears blue and plays in Cardiff it is Cardiff, if a team wears red and plays in Llanelli it is Llanelli. There is no point trying to convince someone from Swansea or Newport otherwise, or whatever combination of survivors is left behind.
In the meantime, the national team is not looking like it will get better any time soon. If the struggles continue, people will stop watching Wales test matches too. When that happens, and there are no hardcore fans left to turn to, the point of no return will have been passed. It will be a full blown death spiral.