The Guinness Pro 14 kicked off on Friday night – and then spread into Saturday, when every other oval and round ball game was providing an alternative. Geraint Powell says it doesn’t have to be like this.

 

The question of the optimal kick-off time in which to play Welsh regional rugby has once again been brought into stark focus on this opening weekend of the new Guinness Pro 14 season. 

Obviously, official attendances have to be taken with a pinch of salt. As many will already know, the market practice is to use a “tickets out” basis and this will include all free tickets handed out to corporate sponsors and all season ticket holders – whether in actual attendance or not.    

Some were querying the wisdom of all four Welsh regions playing at home on the opening weekend of the Pro14 when the Welsh sporting media would be focussed elsewhere – namely, upon a critical Welsh football 2018 World Cup qualifier against Austria in Cardiff.

But the crowds generally held up after a concerted effort this summer by the regions and the WRU to increase them.  

Whatever the on-field issues – especially at the breakdown and with a drifting midfield attack leading to a 10-20 defeat – the Cardiff Blues will have been reasonably happy with a 6,145 attendance for their BBC2 televised opening match on Friday evening.  This represents a significant increase upon last year’s first home attendance against the same visitors. 

The Dragons may have been beaten by Leinster 16-39, but they will have been very happy with a 6,133 attendance for Saturday afternoon’s joint Sky/S4C televised match and even allowing for attending season ticket holders to have the option of bringing a friend along for free.   

The S4C match being brought forward from the usual evening slot, and then shared with Sky, to accommodate the football international, was a complete non-alignment with the region’s strategy over the summer of closely engaging with all 73 feeder clubs and especially on the opening day of the rugby season.  Similar clashes are being avoided going forward.

The Ospreys, on the other hand, given the strenuous efforts across the Welsh regions this summer to increase crowds and with no Swansea City fixture this weekend home or away, and even allowing for the nearby Scarlets also being at home, must be a little disappointed with an opening weekend attendance of 6,826 for their non-televised match on Saturday afternoon – a 22-13 win over Zebre.  One can’t help feel they would have done better by playing their match on Friday evening, especially so given their successful Ospreylia branding and with decent feeder club engagement.  

The Scarlets, despite some negative social media comments from South Africans about their crowd, albeit from a country with a long tradition of representative provincial rugby and higher crowd expectations, will have been delighted with an opening day attendance of 9,108 for their 57-10 win over the Southern Kings in their Sky televised early Saturday evening match.   

Yes, there has been price discounting in Llanelli, but a sustained summer effort to increase crowds on the back of successful and exciting rugby in a low alienation rural region appears to have paid dividends and they are now far better positioned. 

Kick-off times are an emotive subject in Welsh regional rugby, for they go to the heart of the identity divide created by the botching of the intended regionalism in 2003 and whether we should have a truly representative regional or provincial model or a “super” club model masquerading as one. 

Those only connected to Welsh rugby through their region, and this numerically limited group has become disproportionate due largely to the events of 2003 and the subsequent conflicts and failures to evolve in any meaningful way, some of whom view their region as their club (so messily done was the 2003 resource concentration), often express a preference for a Saturday afternoon kick-off.   

But the key issue is that most of those fans attend at other times, albeit frequently and not without a little grumble.  Whereas many that prefer regional kick-off times simply cannot attend on a Saturday afternoon, when they are playing or coaching or volunteering or simply watching club rugby.   

Many others now watch neither the regions nor the clubs, having walked away in the face of the chaos across both of these tiers of the Welsh rugby pyramid.  We need to bring these fans back, not only rely upon an important so-called ‘millennials strategy’.  

The key questions in any decent consumer demand survey on Welsh regional rugby is invariably omitted – at what time can or will you not attend a regional rugby match? 

Unlike in New Zealand, where the season is divided up between regional Super Rugby and the feeder provincial Mitre 10, there is no such split in Welsh rugby.  The regions and the feeder WRU club Premiership are playing simultaneously all season long.  This means Welsh rugby has to get smarter than the smartest rugby country on this planet, something not yet achieved.  

In the current absence of any strategic fixture list synchronisation, building club fixture lists around regional fixture lists to provide the consumer with a weekly “home” offering/habit across both products, aligners or so-called “regionalists” are themselves divided between a Friday evening and a Saturday evening preference to avoid conflict and clashes. 

Some like the attraction of a Saturday afternoon and evening double-header, but the majority of aligners or “regionalists” seem to lean heavily towards a preference for Friday evening matches. 

The attractions of Friday evening regional rugby, given overall Welsh population numbers and no split season between the professional regions and the semi-pro WRU Premiership pathway, were obvious to many from when Terry Cobner and Graham Henry first appreciated the need for a representative regional or provincial model in the years preceding 2003.

 

Albeit a model that was undermined upon implementation in 2003 and which has steadfastly and unsustainably refused to evolve and modernise since as the valleys were heavily alienated and North Wales completely disenfranchised through outright exclusion. 

Firstly, Friday evening reflects the commercial and business realities of South Wales.  There is not a large population upon which a small percentage could viably sustain regional rugby as single users, but there has been historically a very deep penetration for what is globally a minority sport.   

This is especially so in the valleys areas, where leisure alternatives within close proximity have always been relatively more limited.  We don’t have many people in South Wales, but a relatively high percentage of them like rugby.  The issue is one of building regional and club engagement across a required multi-affinities model – club, region and country. 

Secondly, it is a unifying model in a small country where union funding from the member clubs owned Test game will always be an important cross-subsidy part of the regions’ game funding matrix. 

So, a Friday evening club neutral match recognises and respects all club traditions and prevents widespread club alienation.  This sort of inclusive system for all stakeholders would lessen the chances of tension and frictions, or another schism at the level we saw five years ago.  

Welsh rugby has instead sadly and divisively built-up its own nomenclature for abusing categories of fans.  The “rugby mad Welsh public” to describe those only interested in “Team Wales”, the “pink cowboy hat brigade” to describe “Team Wales” – only eventers, and the “fortnightly buys a burger brigade” to describe region-only fans.    

Thirdly, the regional game is then not directly commercially competing on a Saturday afternoon with the non-professional club game.  Nobody can be in two places at the same time.  

The club players, volunteers and fans are free to support the regional game subject only to individual resources in terms of time and money.  When the business model matures, and also the buy-in from all stakeholders increases, greater fixture lists synchronisation will then be possible within a single strategically managed pyramid.  

Fourthly, the Welsh regions are better aligned with a professional football product that has improved in recent decades just as non-Test elite rugby has been in decline.  Any favoured Saturday afternoon model will sometimes not be possible in any event at some regions, due to football primacy of tenure at ground shares, and (at least whilst they pursue a weak Cardiff-centric regional brand) there is little point in the Blues competing directly against Cardiff City Football Club in the same Saturday afternoon consumer slot.   

Fifthly, with the regional matches played on a Friday evening, regional fringe players are then free to play in and continue their development in the WRU Premiership on a Saturday afternoon rather than constantly just hanging around on Saturdays in case of last minute injuries/withdrawals to the selected regional players or indeed travelling and being unused reserves.   

The only remaining logistical obstacle then becomes the return travel plans for unused travelling reserves on a Friday night.  Regional fringe players are then all free to play the next day, subject only to their individual conditioning and match requirements. 

Sixthly, it also frees up the regional game coaching staff to attend and watch and evaluate their fringe and academy players in the WRU Premiership on a Saturday afternoon.  A recent example of this, when the Blues played a Friday night pre-season friendly against the Exeter Chiefs, was head coach Danny Wilson going to the Sardis Road shed the next day to watch Pontypridd play Bedwas.  

As with everybody else in Welsh rugby, the Blues coaching staff cannot be in two places at the same time.  If, e.g., the Blues kick-off on a Saturday afternoon, then the coaching staff cannot concurrently also be watching Cardiff, Pontypridd and Merthyr and monitoring their playing regional players. 

So, when you look at the six main reasons for Friday evening regional rugby, it is broadly a combination of ‘more bang for our buck’ as a more joined-up small country rugby model and more optimal Welsh qualified player development.  

If Friday evening is such a good time to play regional rugby in terms of commercial and consumer business fundamentals, pyramidal harmony and player pathway development, and that is clearly the case, what is the practical obstacle to this being the default? 

The current issue is satisfying broadcasters, especially under the 2014-18 Pro12/14 TV contract.   

A quarter of regional rugby income comes from central competition platforms, the vast majority of which are TV rights from broadcasters.  Whereas BBC Wales televise a match on Friday evening, it was agreed for 2014-18 that Sky would televise a Saturday afternoon match and S4C a Sunday afternoon match.   

Such was the damage to devolved income streams to those matches selected for Sunday broadcast, S4C were later permitted by Sky Sports to move back to Saturday evening (if not before 7.30pm). 

Similar considerations apply in Europe, at least for the Scarlets and the Ospreys in the main competition and which is the main focus for BT/Sky (just BT from 2018). 

So there will be some club-friendly televised matches on a Saturday evening and some club-hostile televised matches on a Saturday afternoon.  This is simply unavoidable and of no great harm in manageable quantities under the current and future TV contracts. 

This is the only practical obstacle.  Any other purported obstacles are not based on sound commercial acumen and/or any optimal Welsh-qualified player development competence.