Four games was the right call – Phillips
THE Welsh Rugby Union have launched a staunch defence of their decision to play four warmup matches ahead of the Rugby World Cup, writes Simon Thomas.
It’s a schedule which has come in for a fair amount of criticism, amid fears over players picking up injuries, with former Test stars JPR Williams and James Hook among those to voice their concerns.
In the past, Wales have played just three warm-up games, but this time around they have been presented with back-to-back fixtures against both England and Ireland.
Complaints about the expanded programme increased after Gareth Anscombe was ruled out of the World Cup after suffering serious knee ligament damage in the opening match at Twickenham. And Wales head coach Warren Gatland has said criticism over the schedule was “fair” and “warranted”.
But now, ahead of the third match, at home to Ireland, WRU chief executive Martyn Phillips has given the governing body’s side of the story.
He insists the decision wasn’t financially motivated and maintains it was the right one.
“The interesting thing on that is, to my knowledge, all of the teams are playing four games,” he said.
“It’s a bit like the Lions where how many games you have before that first Test is critical.
“And, if you talk to the players, they would say they really, really felt it after the Twickenham game, having not played for 10 or 12 weeks.
“There is no substitute for playing and those decisions are made in conjunction with the coaches.
“You are always going to play three, so you are only really saying are we going to play three or four?
“The decision was made to play four.
“As I look at it today, it still feels like the right decision.”
ALL roads will lead to Cardiff in the Guinness PRO14 this season, with the final of the cross-border competition coming to Wales for the first time.
Rugby correspondent SIMON THOMAS sat down with chief executive Martin Anayi to discuss that showpiece event at the Cardiff City Stadium and a whole range of other issues surrounding the league...
Q: For the last three years, attendances at the PRO14 final have topped 45,000, so why have you decided to stage it at a 33,000-capacity venue this season?
A: I think it’s the right size for us in the city.
Yes, our final has got bigger and bigger every year. We had record crowds in the last four years, up to 47,000-plus in Glasgow back in May.
But for us it was just the right time to come to Cardiff.
It wasn’t an option to have the final in the Principality Stadium as they have contracts in place for other events.
So staging it at the Cardiff City Stadium offered a great solution.
Cardiff or Wales is a slightly smaller audience overall.
So what we do to make sure it really blows the doors off in terms of atmosphere and that’s a sell-out.
We want it full to the rafters. So for us, it was the perfect size.
We have already seen a record amount of interest on pre-sale and registry of interest. We have been blown away by how that’s gone.
So there is an interest here and for us it was just the right time and the right size stadium.
Cardiff City have been amazing. They are real rugby fans which is quite unusual for a football operating management team, to know the game quite as well as they do.
We hope putting the final in Cardiff will generate a buzz around the tournament.
It gives us a chance to focus a bit of attention in Wales and we think that will go a long away.
We have worked very hard to bring a final to Cardiff and we are delighted that we’ve got one in June next year.
Q: Do you need home finalist to fill the stadium?
A: It would be great, wouldn’t it? It always helps. We’ve had a home finalist for the last four years, which has boosted ticket sales and interest.
It does spur on performance as well. The guys in the Welsh regions will want to be in a final in Cardiff.
But our job is to bring people into the city and showcase what’s good about Cardiff and Wales. We are working on the time of the kick-off to make sure people can come in from wherever they are.
Q: There has been talk over the years about bringing in American teams or more South African sides to the league? Where do we stand at the moment in terms of expansion?
A: I love the idea of rugby being strong in America.
Are we the best way for that to happen now they have a domestic league? Probably not.
My view on it has changed over the last couple of years and we are not pursuing it anymore.
We love South Africa and we think the potential there needs to be realised. The Cheetahs are going strong in the Currie Cup, so watch out for them this season. We need to make the Kings stronger.
My job is to make sure the bottom half of the table is a strong as the top half and I’m just going to focus on that for the next few years.
Q: So we are staying at 14 teams for the foreseeable future then?
A: Yes. But I want the 14 to be strong though. When you don’t have promotion and relegation, the bottom half of the table meeds to really push the top half.
We are probably getting to one to eight being really strong and we need 9 to 14 able to beat 1 to 8 on any day.
Q: What’s the latest news in terms of CVC coming on board as investors in the league?
A: The Gallagher Premiership have obviously already entered into that relationship with CVC.
We know them well, we think very highly of them and overall I think it’s a good thing in the game.
I take it as a real positive that you’ve third party investors who want to be involved in our league.
That’s amazing I think. A few years ago I don’t think you could have said they would be that interested.
We have made ourselves attractive to third party investors, which we are not unhappy about. There are lots of people interested.
It’s not how much is being offered, it’s what do you give away, it’s what support they can give, because they are an important strategic partner if they become an owner.
Our shareholders and ourselves as a management team have to be happy with them.
And do we believe the investment they bring can help us do the things we want to do with the league? When you get an offer in that says X million, it might look good, but actually the detail is different.
There’s no timescale. We just want to make sure we get it right.
Q: What do you make of the speculation about a British & Irish League being set up?
A: That was news to us.
But any new competition to happen, we would have to all agree.
We are in an important relationship with the English and French in Europe. We are in an important relationship with the Italians and South Africans in the PRO14.
Whether anything different would be a better option than we’ve got, that’s not that clear.
I think those conversations will continue to come up time and time again.
My personal view is we play the English in the Champions Cup and they are amazing games. We love that tournament. And there some amazing things about the PRO14 that I don’t think we should ignore.
We have got a good product and fans are loving it more and more by the day.
We wouldn’t have the level of interest we do from sponsors, broadcasters and fans if we weren’t doing something right.
Q: Premier Sports have been on board as broadcasters for a year now. How do you reflect on your decision to go with them?
A: We were the last of the top professional leagues to go mainly on pay TV. What I championed and achieved is you don’t go fully on pay.
You don’t make the switch from mainly free to pay overnight. If you do, you will see a significant drop off. We haven’t. Overall our viewership is broadly the same from pre-Premier deal to now. We have held that viewership and we have brought in more money.
The Premier subscriptions are beyond our expectations. We’ve increased our production standards and brought in amazing talent to come and present the game.
At the same time, FreeSports and S4C give us a free-to-air platform and their numbers are doing very well. We have invested heavily in our social media, which is You Tube, Twitter and Instagram. We’ve had double digit growth across those, where the younger audience consumes their media.
We have a 20 per cent increase in our website traffic and we’ve added 60,000 members to our database in six months. That is a significant rise in everyone’s awareness and engagement in the tournament.
That does not suggest there is a problem. That suggests there are a lot of positive things about the competition.
Q: You will be aware though that there’s a fair bit of apathy and negativity towards the league in certain quarters in Wales, such as on social media?
A: I think is difficult to judge it on social media. It is a vocal minority that starts to sway your thinking about something.
The facts are that there was a 340,000 attendance at Welsh regional games last year and season ticket sales have gone really well. Our TV subscriptions are going well here, S4C has done some really good
work. There are a lot of positives. There are a lot of people that are committed to the regional game and the PRO14 here and it’s our job to grow that.
My personal opinion is you can’t judge on what is a minority view against the majority which want the game to grow here.
I don’t think there’s an issue in Wales. I just think we have to do more events like having a final here.
That focuses the attention on Wales for the PRO14, hopefully in a positive way.
Q: One of the abiding complaints about the league is the number of games that are played out between depleted sides with the stars missing. How can you address that?
A: I’ve looked at the statistics and whether the top players turn out in our league as much as they do in the English Premiership.
And in Wales they do, that’s the reality. It’s in Ireland where they have a wider range in player management.
We have come off as many international weekends as we possibly can. We only have one clash now.You can’t change things like the World Cup. You just have to play during it if you have the amount of games we do in our league.
Our overall aim has to make every game more important and reduce the burden on players.
Q: The other consistent bugbear is the standard of officiating and the need for neutral officials. What’s your take on that?
A: The first six rounds this season will be fully neutral, in terms of all the officials. That’s new.
That’s something we have been working very hard on. It’s cost a lot of money which is the right thing to do. We have grown our pool of officials. It takes time.
Q: Is it possible to get to a point where every match have a neutral TMO?
A: If the pool is big enough, which takes more time, then yeah, why not?
The cost thing is a sort of red herring because you just need to spend whatever it costs to run a tournament. You need to spend money to make it the sort of competition it should be to bring in the best players and coaches. We are spending a lot of money doing that and rightly so.
Q: Lastly, so you have any worries over the impact of Brexit on the tournament?
A: We have done a lot of work with EPCR, the European Cup organisers on it, just understanding the ramifications if it does happen.
We understand that from a legal point of view, from visas, changing tournament rules. We have done a detailed review of it. There is quite a bit to do. We wait the outcome as everybody else does but we are ready for whatever happens.
There would have to be some sort of permit system and the administrative burden will go up.
We will support the teams in whatever way we can.