OSPREYS AND SCARLETS: Minister says she can’t save a region as Senedd fails to agree a single word on Welsh rugby’s future
The Senedd spent an hour debating the future of regional rugby on Wednesday, and failed to come to an agreement. The Ospreys and Scarlets are no safer this morning, and the Welsh Government has said in terms that it cannot save a region.
Culture and Sport Minister Heledd Fychan told the Chamber she shared every concern raised about the WRU‘s plan to cut the men’s game from four teams to three. But asked to ensure all four regions survive, she said: “I can’t give that assurance. That’s what you’re asking me to do.”
“We can’t, as a Government, direct the WRU to maintain a specific structure for the professional game,” she said. She had challenged the union to show its decisions were “transparent, evidence-based and sustainable” and that the impact on players, fans, staff and communities had been considered “before any decision is made, not afterwards”.
The union confirmed in July that Cardiff and the Dragons will be offered two of the three licences from 2028, leaving the Ospreys and Scarlets to fight for the third. Its licensing process starts in December.
‘With respect, the record shows that it has’
Fychan’s case rests on the WRU being independent of government. Much of the debate was about how much public money is already in the game.
Louise Emery, the Reform UK MS who moved the motion, listed it: £13.5m of Welsh Government survival funding in 2021, split £2.7m each between the union and the four regions; £475,000 in 2022; £1.8m for the national stadium in 2024; and nearly £435,000 from Sport Wales this year.
Swansea Council has approved £5.1m to rebuild St Helen’s with a 50-year lease for the Ospreys, and the city deal has added £771,000, she said. Carmarthenshire Council owns Parc y Scarlets and lent the club £2.4m, still being repaid.
“When the Minister told this Chamber last month that the Government does not fund professional sports teams, with respect, the record shows that it has,” she said.
Louise Emery, the Reform UK MS who moved the motion (Image: Senedd Cymru)
She asked the Minister for three things: to get the WRU to publish its business case for three teams against four, independently checked, before licensing begins in December; a full public record of every grant, loan and stadium investment and the conditions attached; and a Government assessment of the impact on jobs, businesses, community programmes and player pathways.
What Swansea and Llanelli stand to lose
“What happens to St Helen’s, where 90 per cent of availability of the ground is meant for community use?” Emery asked. “Who pays the rent? Who fills the stands? What happens to Parc y Scarlets and the council loans still being repaid?” She listed the academies, the coaches and physios, Ospreys in the Community, and “the hotels, the pubs, the cafes and the taxis”.
Steven Rodaway, Reform’s MS for Gŵyr Abertawe, said: “We support the Ospreys. We support keeping all four professional rugby teams in Wales.” Saving the Ospreys “should never mean sacrificing the Scarlets”.
He said the Minister’s written answer to him had confirmed the Government had done no assessment of the economic or community impact. “Business rate support is welcome, but a pub needs customers.”
Carmelo Colasanto, Reform’s MS for Sir Gaerfyrddin, said losing the Scarlets “would be the final nail in the coffin for Llanelli town centre, a town that has already lost too much”. Match-day trade “does not move somewhere else in Llanelli, it simply disappears”.
He named Mervyn Davies, Scott Gibbs, Scott Quinnell, Ray Gravell and Phil Bennett. “These clubs are not franchises to be shuffled around a map. You cannot rebuild 150 years of sporting heritage. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.”
Steve Bayliss, Reform’s MS for Afan Ogwr Rhondda, said Aberavon were playing their 150th season with Ospreys players in their squad: “That is what a player pathway looks like in practice.” His constituency and the Minister’s “knows what losing a region feels like”: the Celtic Warriors, built on Bridgend and Pontypridd, were wound up in 2004 after one season.
Steve Bayliss, Reform UK MS for Afan Ogwr Rhondda (Image: Senedd Cymru)
‘A play-off for the west’
Colasanto said a WRU letter he received on 15 September called Cardiff and the Dragons the preferred licence holders “given that they are the incumbents”. “Well, the Scarlets and the Ospreys are also incumbents, so I don’t know how they came to that conclusion.”
The capital licence was earmarked for a club the WRU itself owns, he said, whose £2.4m loss was left out of the group’s adjusted operating figures. The union had promised “a fair and transparent tendering process” for three licences; instead two were earmarked and one contested. “This is not a level playing field. It is a play-off for the west.”
Carmelo Colasanto, Reform UK MS for Sir Gaerfyrddin: “It is a play-off for the west” (Image: Senedd Cymru)
Paul Davies, for the Welsh Conservatives, made the same point: the WRU “has a conflict of interest as the owner of one of the four regional teams”. The reason it had not published its business case was “in all probability” that “the business case isn’t strong enough”. He put his party on record for four teams.
John Davies, Plaid Cymru‘s MS for Gŵyr Abertawe, called the Reform motion “a political points-scoring exercise” because the union is independent, then turned on the union’s finances. Ireland’s rugby union earned around £86m against the WRU’s £106m, he said, yet Ireland’s men were third in the world and Wales’s could not make the top ten. “If there’s nothing to hide, why are they hiding?”
The WRU was “meant to be the stewards of the grass roots”, he said. “The Welsh Rugby Union have become nothing but a bloated corporate body managing the game’s slow decline.”
John Davies, Plaid Cymru MS for Gŵyr Abertawe: “If there’s nothing to hide, why are they hiding?” (Image: Senedd Cymru)
The Plaid MS Gwyn Williams, who shares the Gŵyr Abertawe seat, has already written to the union demanding board minutes showing whether Cardiff-linked members stood aside from the licence votes.
‘Not within our remit’
Fychan said many of the questions were for the WRU, not her, and “it is important that the WRU listens to this debate today and responds to those concerns”. Lis McLean, Plaid’s MS for Pontypridd Cynon Merthyr, intervened on Reform: “What you’re asking for is not what’s within our remit.” The union was “coming before the committee again”, she said, and the motion was an attempt “to get some sort of feeling of ‘We love rugby'”.
Tata, and a press release
Closing for Reform, Llŷr Powell said the regions were worth an estimated £50m to £55m a year to the Welsh economy and the Government had intervened for employers before. “What role you have to play is the same as when Tata was going under. We stepped in to protect jobs.”
He said the Deputy First Minister had told the last Labour Government in February “you simply can’t wash your hands of this”, and the First Minister had recently argued that a Senedd motion on fair funding could “send a clear signal”. “We could have sent to the WRU today a clear message that this is unacceptable.”
Plaid had issued a press release during the election campaign calling for the Scarlets’ survival, he said. “And today, they’re saying that their Government can’t get involved. That is unacceptable.” Fychan replied: “You’re misrepresenting them.”
He called the WRU “the worst-run union right now” and said talent was already leaving for English leagues because of the uncertainty. “We’ll be back here when the danger comes if you don’t support them now, because we know the WRU will push this through.”
Then the votes
At voting time, an hour later, the Reform motion fell 44 to 43, with one abstention. The Government’s amendment, which replaced the commitment to four regions with a call for a “full assessment” of the social, community and economic consequences, tied 44-44.
The Senedd chamber as the vote on the Government’s amendment was taken, just before 6pm on Wednesday (Image: Senedd Cymru)
Deputy Presiding Officer Kerry Ferguson used her casting vote against it, as the Senedd‘s rules require on a tie. “I’ve never done this before,” she said. The Senedd therefore agreed nothing.
Deputy Presiding Officer Kerry Ferguson, whose casting vote decided the tied amendment (Image: Senedd Cymru)
The WRU’s director of rugby, Dave Reddin, said last month the cut to three teams was “the way forward” and the union was “really committed to it”. Swansea Council’s High Court challenge to the union is ongoing.
Related stories from Swansea Bay News
WRU: Reddin insists cut to three teams is happening, blaming ‘brutal economics’
The union’s director of rugby on why the Ospreys and Scarlets must fight for one licence.
WRU: Swansea Senedd member demands proof Cardiff-linked board members sat out licence votes
Gwyn Williams’s letter to the union’s interim chair.
WRU: Cardiff and Dragons safe as Ospreys and Scarlets left fighting for one west Wales licence
The July decision at the centre of the row.
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