Wales’ summer tour to New Zealand will be officially cancelled next week after the host union told half its staff they will be losing their jobs.
The tour – which was meant to go ahead in July – will be scrapped with major doubts over when and if the planned two Tests against the All Blacks will now be rescheduled.
Wayne Pivac was meant to return to his homeland for his first tour as Wales coach with Tests in Auckland on July 4 and Wellington on July 11, after having played a one-off Test in Japan on June 27.
The Japan game is also set to be scrapped, but it is the ramifications of the New Zealand cost-cutting as a result of the global coronavirus pandemic that will echo all the way back to Welsh rugby, with the scheduled home Test against the All Blacks in November also in doubt.
New Zealand Rugby will make half of the organisation’s 180 full-time staff redundant and have the other half re-apply for their jobs as part of cost-cutting to cope with the impact of the outbreak.
“We’re working through consultation with our people at the moment on that and it’s obviously a challenging time for rugby so we are taking all steps to make sure we communicate directly with our staff,” NZR chief executive Mark Robinson told Radio New Zealand.
“It’s an incredibly challenging time with covid right around the country, we’re seeing situations where businesses are in challenging positions and we’re no different.”
The move comes despite optimism in the governing body that elite rugby competition, suspended since March, will be given the green light to restart as early as Monday when the government decides whether to ease social restrictions.
Robinson said NZR was dealing with “an incredibly challenging time”, and like other businesses in challenging positions because of COVID-19 it was seeing a significant reduction of revenue through the course of the year.
In late March Robinson estimated that NZR would lose £50m in revenue this year if no elite rugby was played due to Covid-19.
NZR staff have already had their pay cut by 20% last month.
#REVEALED Last week New Zealand Rugby announced a seven and a half million dollar loss for 2019 — now they’ve been forced to lay off half their full time employees.https://t.co/JGiQokBxAK
— nzherald (@nzherald) May 7, 2020
All rugby has been suspended across the country since March, leading to pay cuts for players and staff cuts at the country’s five professional Super Rugby clubs and at community level.
Welsh Rugby Union chief executive Martyn Phillips has admitted that when sport does start to return, rugby will not be among the first to re-appear.
“I am expecting rugby to be at the back end of the return to sport,” he said.
“The July tour announcement I would think would be imminent and with the autumn there are three factors.
“Who the opposition is, playing behind closed doors or not and whether the games simply don’t go ahead.”