Loading player
For days the players of the Welsh national rugby team have been involved in the Six Nations tournament they are taking consider a strike that would be unprecedented at this level. A decision is expected by today, Wednesday 22 February, and could cancel the Six Nations match scheduled for Saturday in Cardiff against England.
The reasons for the strike do not concern the tournament or the opponents, but Welsh rugby itself, which has long been feeling the effects of rugby’s global difficulties more than other movements. Over time, the organizational and economic problems of Wales have expanded to the point of reaching the national team, the maximum expression of the movement.
Players’ concerns are mainly contractual, but arise from a tangle of other bottom-up issues that have been dragging on for some time.
Wales players after the defeat against Scotland (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
Top-level Welsh rugby is managed by the association, the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU), which in addition to all national team-related activities, finances and oversees the four professional teams that they roughly divide the national territory, also known as franchises: Cardiff, Dragons, Ospreys and Scarlets.
These four teams are at the apex of their respective regional systems and represent them at high levels: in short, they function as a sort of funnel to collect and in theory optimize the “products” of a country with a huge rugby tradition, but also with little population (it about 3 million inhabitants) and without large resources available.
The effects of the pandemic, however, have considerably worsened the economic health of all professional rugby, right from the highest levels: the New Zealand All Blacks, for example, sold a piece of their commercial part to an investment fund, while in English league, one of the most important in the world, two teams went bankrupt this season.
In Wales these difficulties do not yet have a solution and indeed have intertwined with other issues concerning both the management of the Federation, which British newspapers often describe as arrogant and amateurish, and the changes taking place in the country, where rugby no longer seems to enjoy of such a clear preference on the part of the population.
To survive after the losses caused by the pandemic restrictions, Welsh clubs have therefore run into debt and are now cutting their annual budgets. As a result they plan to reduce the number of players under contract and treat potential renewals downwards.
(Michael Steele/Getty Images)
Many players currently in the national team have contracts expiring at the end of this season: they have therefore been playing for at least a year with no certainty about their future, and in several cases with normal salaries, if not already quite low.
Some of them have spoken openly about the fear of getting injured and being without a team for next season, or not being able to buy a house or generally plan for the future without the guarantee of a long-term contract. Others also revealed that they were on antidepressant medications.
This precariousness is inevitably affecting the results of the national team, which after winning the Six Nations in 2021 is going through one of the most difficult periods in its history. They have lost 11 of their last 14 matches and after losing to Italy for the first time in Cardiff in the last Six Nations, they were even beaten by Georgia last November.
By December these results had convinced the WRU to recall New Zealand manager Warren Gatland, who had left Wales in 2019 after twelve years of great results. However, the problems are much more rooted and do not only concern the sporting aspect, as seen in the two defeats suffered in this Six Nations against Ireland and Scotland, in both cases conceding more than 30 points.
Gatland was due to announce line-ups for Saturday’s match against England on Tuesday this week but did not and at the equally organized press conference he said on his arrival he was unaware of the current situation. He added that for him the strike is not the best solution, but it seems to be for the players. Alun Wyn Jones, one of the most experienced and charismatic, has been quite clear in recent days: «If you treat people so badly for so long, you get to this point».
Warren Gatland in conferenza stampa (David Rogers/Getty Images)
The negotiations and dialogues held in recent times have further worsened the relationship between managers and players, with the latter denouncing that they have been marginalized and criticizing certain investments deemed superfluous. There are also some points under discussion on which the achievement of a new collective agreement, or a possible strike, seems to depend: one of these concerns a federal law much criticized by one side but protected by the other.
To concentrate and retain Welsh players in Wales, the Federation establishes that in order to be called up for the national team, one must necessarily play for one of the four club teams in the Welsh territory: one can go abroad without losing the call-up only after having reached the 60 appearances for the national team, which is quite a lot.
Players would like to remove this requirement, or at least lower it significantly. In fact, foreign teams, especially in England and France, offer the most lucrative contracts in European rugby and at the moment they give economic guarantees that Wales is no longer able to provide.
– Read also: The Rugby World Cup is causing a lot of trouble in France
