The autumn internationals are over, the Pro12 and European tournaments are back and the focus is once again on the Welsh regions. But Geraint Powell  – from @TheVietGwent blog – says a weakened and muted Welsh media rarely examine the fundamental issues that undermine those regions.

 

The failings of the Welsh rugby media were always going to be difficult essays, of which this will be one of several between now and the end of the season, for how can so much have gone wrong within the Welsh national rugby pyramid since 1990 if there was any meaningful form of fit for purpose independent Welsh rugby media robustly scrutinising, analysing, criticising, challenging and holding all actions/omissions up to account and to close public scrutiny?

Irish rugby asked itself the big structural and systemic questions after the game turned professional, for Syd Millar and Tom Kiernan forced it upon Irish rugby, and arrived at answers acceptable to the overwhelming majority of stakeholders.  A national team, a national “A” team, 4 club neutral representative provinces for all, with their own “A” teams, and the club game (including their bigger historic “1st class” clubs) underneath.  The Irish rugby fraternity know who/what they are, and they are comfortable in their own professional era identity.  They have had prolonged periods of provincial success, especially in the former European Heineken Cup through Munster and later Leinster, and their Test team has this calendar year impressively recorded victories over the old SANZAR trio of South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.

And then we look at Welsh rugby which, in structural/systemic terms is held together only by the national player development pathway, is an absolute disjointed mess from top to bottom and at the non-Test professional level some sort of ghastly hybrid compromise between a union operated regional model and a contradictory and conflicting (nominally) independent private club model.   Many fans and sponsors alienated by regional brands anchored upon opposing club and locality heritages, others outright excluded by geography.  A few noisy fans irritated that they have to have the appended regional baggage, when their “region” is their old “1st class” club to them.

A whole pyramid club meritocracy only adopted in 1990 that was so good that it was abandoned only 13 years later with the formation of “regions”.  A grassroots game that is in a sorry state, short of derby matches and with many senior and youth teams short of players.  We now have 16 WRU Premiership clubs ring fenced so effectively with some personnel changes we have gone all the way back to the 1989-90 of 18 Western Mail Championship “1st class” clubs (which, with a regional game, we should never have abandoned but reformed).  Plus regions on top.

But regions weren’t created in 1995, when the game went pro and when they should have been.  The way they were created in 2003-04 would have had a vibrant Welsh rugby media in uproar, such was the obvious haphazard mess in trying to integrate two obviously incompatible and competing business models.  But no.  Even those journalists that do ask awkward questions usually now soon retreat under a barrage of social media personal abuse to empty platitudes about “success will cure” and/or “nothing will change“.  I regularly form the impression that Irish rugby administrators have a better handle on Welsh rugby’s structural and systemic problems than much of the Welsh rugby media (link).

This long-planned essay has been brought forward by a few weeks, triggered by a tour de force of a performance from retired Daily Mail rugby journalist Peter Jackson, now of The Rugby Paper, on last Sunday’s BBC Scrum V programme.  I say “tour de force”, but there was no major analysis of off field issues and no solutions proffered.  That the timing of the sudden renewal of Warren Gatland’s contract for the 2016-19 period might have been driven by domestic political considerations would hardly have constituted much in the way of “analysis” even when it was announced in December 2013.

The best analysis came in a brief interview with occasional pundit, the ever excellent Dr Gwyn Jones, and his point on the absence of an obvious and consistent successful 20 minute period snippet of the Welsh style re-alignment “blueprint” over the Autumn Internationals campaign.  The best comment was made by usual pundit Martyn Williams, whether caretaker coach Rob Howley needs a period as head coach of a region or external club before he can be considered for the national coaching job in succession to Warren Gatland in 2020?  Of course he does.  For every Bob Paisley, there are plenty of other No.2’s in sport that fail to make the final step up.  I would love the frank views of Martyn Williams on the pitiful state of regionalism in eastern Glamorgan, but that won’t happen.

But compared to what usually passes for debate on this somewhat staid and formulaic show, “Banter TV” and which wastes the talents of Ross Harries, Jonathan Davies and Martyn Williams, it was certainly different and well and truly “off message”.  And for those fans who believe that BBC Wales and Trinity Mirror tacitly supported former WRU CEO Roger Lewis during his 2013-14 conflict with the main funding directors at the “super” clubs/”regions”, Peter Jackson’s words on the platform of a BBC programme seemed positively cathartic.  He played to this audience, disproportionately vocal on social media, and they lapped it up.  Perhaps that was the real significance of his attendance and the event.  Therapeutic, in healing past wounds.  A pressure release valve finally opened.  Not significant for what he actually said, and which was soon forgotten.  The fact that he made no constructive comments on the regional game, the weak supply chain that underpins “Team Wales”, was ultimately besides the point.

BBC Wales finally provided a platform for somebody to openly criticise the WRU, and particularly the perceived past triumvirate of Roger Lewis, David Pickering and Warren Gatland.  The public panel debate, which included Roger Lewis, chaired by Gareth Lewis in January 2014 had not met with the approval of attending regional fans and especially the apparent editing before showing.  Nobody within the Welsh rugby media in 2012-14 pinned down Roger Lewis into publicly stating his true aims in relation to the non-Test tier of the Welsh pro game.  The nearest we got was Chris Hewitt of The Independent in November 2012 (link).  We had the regions funding directors implying or more that Roger Lewis wanted to drive them out of business, Roger Lewis doing some things obviously tactically inconsistent with such an objective, and silence or evasion from the then WRU CEO himself.  All very unsatisfactory, in journalistic and in public consumption and debating terms.

We must now hope that Warren Gatland does not at some point in the future treat last week’s episode of BBC Scrum V as an open invitation for him to appear and provide his own frank Kiwi views on the overall state of the WRU pyramid and particularly of his regional supply chain and with a particular reference to vision, fitness and basic ball skills.  Hiroshima-esque, that interview might be, a lead back page global rugby news story from France to NZ.

You can make a solid argument in favour of the biggest single long-term casualty of the 2013-14 conflict within Welsh professional rugby was the reputation of the reporting Welsh rugby media.  And for an industry where the national broadcaster is under significant financial pressure and where the print media globally is struggling to develop viable business models in the digital/social media age (high risk “pay walls” in a diverse industry, or chasing online advertising revenue) it was ultimately the very last thing that those involved with Welsh rugby’s media required in the long-term.  Even without the armistice fudge in 2014, simply passing along the problem solving until 2020.

One of the best journalists in London with an interest in Welsh rugby, and one of the last universally regarded as impartial and objective on all matters of Welsh rugby, being the latest casualty of this industry wide retraction.  I make no comment upon the Telegraph’s decisions over who to retain and over who to let go, for there are libel laws in this legal jurisdiction.  But a depressing reminder of this journalistic era and perhaps of the future yet to come.

Journalists, commentators, and pundits are now openly caricatured as “pro-WRU/anti-PRW” or as “anti-WRU/pro-PRW”, and each one individually labelled and assigned, everywhere you turn on social media and on rugby forums.  Especially on Twitter, with its 140 characters restrictions.  All a bit ridiculous really as there is not even a “PRW”, in the sense some feel or yearn for.  A Welsh equivalent of the English club grouping of “PRL”, with central distribution of incomes through “A”, “B” and “P” shares and with commercial control of their own domestic league.  PRW was/is little more than a major shareholder collective meeting place, a defence mechanism created against Roger Lewis.  You might expect differing political stances between, e.g., the Guardian/Independent and the Telegraph/Daily Mail, but I am not sure that it is remotely helpful in relation to rugby journalists and where preconceptions do not assist positive reputations.

The Western Mail of Trinity Mirror is labelled by many as “pro-WRU/anti-PRW”, especially caricatured and signalled out for social media personal abuse by some are Andy Howell and Delme Parfitt.  But not Simon Thomas.  For he is caricatured and abused by others as “anti-WRU/pro-PRW”.  When all said and done, all three are just decent men going about their chosen career in a struggling industry to the best of their ability and with a shared love of the sport.  There is no need for personal vilification, if you disagree.  None of them, or their more junior colleagues,and whatever you think of their opinions on particular rugby issues, are acting out of any malice.  At worst, their opinions on a given subject are misguided.

The other print rugby journalists based out of Swansea, Newport and Llanelli are definitely labelled on most rugby forums and social media sites as “anti-WRU/pro-PRW”, as are most of the exiled Welsh print journalists in London.  But BBC Wales are labelled as “pro-WRU/anti-PRW”, especially commentators and pundits who try and avoid contentiously using “Cardiff” and/or “Newport Gwent” in the (to date) regional rugby branding disaster zones of eastern Glamorgan and of Gwent.

This is all frustrating for, as a follower of Pontypool RFC as my old “1st class” club, both Andy Howell and Peter Jackson at opposing ends of the spectrum have been fair and objective about the club in decades long past and provided great coverage and long before the botched professional era and polarisation within the Welsh game.

If one is to comment upon the marked decline in quality of the Welsh (and non-Welsh, to be fair) rugby media since the 1980s, and I think that is almost universally accepted to be true, then it is only fair that we initially view these issues in this first essay on the topic through the prism of all of the structural and systemic issues that have been negatively working against the abilities of the individual professionals in the media covering Welsh rugby since that era.

(1) We know that small countries have narrow elites, in all walks of life.  Wales and Welsh rugby are no exceptions.  Life in a bubble.  And there has been a very specific narrowing of media interest in the elite end of Welsh rugby, from the 18 “1st class” clubs of as late as 1989-90 all the way down to the 4 “super” clubs or “regions” from 2004.

Yes, there were always some media “favoured” clubs south of the M4.  But there was far greater diversity.  Not once after Swansea in 1983 did a club south of the M4 win the Western Mail Club Championship (the old unofficial league) until after national leagues were created in 1990 (Swansea again, in 1992).  A journalist in Newport or wider Gwent/Monmouthshire had 7 “1st class” clubs to cover in the 1980s, with Newport regularly behind Pontypool and Newbridge in the rankings.

Now it is just the Dragons, for the WRU Premiership club platform has been badly commercially neglected since 2003.  Cynics would say to ease the pressure on the stressed regions tier above it, but there has also been a WRU pre-occupation with the “Team Wales” financial engine of the Welsh game that funds the entire pyramid.  Especially without the WRU having active involvement in running the regions.

(2) At the same time, we have seen a growing print media concentration in South Wales.  Not only did the Trinity Mirror group acquire the Western Mail and South Wales Echo  group (including WalesOnline) in 2009, but they acquired the South Wales Evening post group in 2015.  Only the South Wales Argus group in Gwent so far remains outside of this print media consolidation.

We are well on the way to one rugby journalist for Trinity Mirror/WalesOnline effectively assigned to each region and perhaps inevitably then acting as a de facto additional external publicity officer.  You can see it beginning to happen already.  Rob Lloyd, Scarlets?  Mark Orders, Ospreys?  Maybe Simon Thomas, Blues?  Then buy the South Wales Argus, and Chris Kirwan for the Dragons?

These may be the industry dynamics and evolution, but it is hardly consistent with healthy and optimal journalism and a collective pool of reporting and critique.

(3) Rugby journalists are rational human beings and, like everybody else (as a general rule), will rationally act according to their own vested interests and especially in in times of upheaval and change.  The most striking example of this was perhaps in 2002-03, when incoming WRU CEO David Moffett inherited responsibility for the Terry Cobner/Steve Hansen plan i.e. 4 logical regions through new companies/Newcos. North/South/East/West.

Now in a proposed contraction from 9 South Walian pro clubs to 4 pro regions, why would those journalists only operating in the South Wales commercial environment want one of those four regions placed up in Wrexham?  Why would a turkey vote for Christmas?  So some, if not all, have been complicit in not unpicking the sillier arguments raised by some South Walian vested interests against a commercially logical North Wales pro region.

That plan’s defeat now being made to look particularly stupid and parochial by the ever growing RGC1404 project semi-pro regional club.  If you based non-Test pro teams on the basis of player development, rather than on future consumer demand, the Pacific Islands of Samoa, Fiji and Tonga would be loaded with such teams.  They are not. There is not even a single such team in the islands.  Not even one in Super Rugby.  A quarter of the Welsh population is in North/upper Mid Wales.

(4) The advent of professionalism in 1995 undoubtedly changed the entire dynamics of the rugby media and the interface between player and media.  Journalists in the 1980s were not faced by Test and non-Test team in-house media manager experts trying to control the corporate message and with players trained to be wary of the media and coached not to go off message and to keep any comments uncontroversial.

I recently re-watched the excellent DVD of the rebel New Zealand Cavaliers tour of South Africa in 1986 (link).  What really struck me was the quality and frankness of the player interviews and their own analysis, especially from stand-in All Blacks captain (and later NZRU Chairman) Jock Hobbs, a far cry from the bland clichés in modern brief media interviews.  Even when a player is harassed nowadays for a very brief half-time interview, the latest scourge to afflict the pro game, he is still guarded and bland in what he says.

(5) Whilst former players making the move from Test star to media commentator/pundit was a well worn career path even in the days of rugby player day jobs and before the professional era, it has taken on an entirely new dynamic since 1995.  It is now an integral part of top Test player post-career retirement planning, in many instances converting the household brand as a star player into a post playing-career source of income from rugby.

The problem is that a former player is not necessarily a great pundit or analyst, just as a former player will not always make a great rugby coach.  He may, but he may not.  Some are, and some aren’t.  But he is a household brand/name to attract the casual viewer.

And, in structural terms, there is an inherent difficulty.  A rather obvious, as it is ever so frequently commented upon, potential conflict of interest when called upon to dispassionately analyse the output and performances of former friends, team mates and coaching staff.

(6) Welsh print journalism has been weakened by a substantial exodus of Welsh rugby journalists to working for the UK national newspapers in London.  And the talent lost in recent decades has been voluminous – Eddie Butler, Paul Rees, Stephen Jones, Steve Bale to name but a few.  And Welsh based UK journalists such as Peter Jackson.

In structural terms, subject to one caveat, this could have been a positive.  It ensures a Welsh perspective on the UK stage, indeed they arguably have a disproportionate influence.  It provides a platform to publicise and discuss limited headline grabbing Welsh issues.  And it enables a conveyor belt of new journalistic talent to come through in South Wales.  No bed blocking, with such career progression.

But that one caveat has been overriding, for the UK press is only a platform to discuss LIMITED Welsh rugby issues.  It is no place to analyse and discuss deep rooted Welsh pyramidal structural and systemic problems, for the rather obvious reason of lack of predominantly English reader appetite.  Whether in Tunbridge Wells or in Islington.  And that applies whatever the business model balance between chasing newspaper print sales, “paywall” subscription revenue, or online digital advertising through “hits”.

A Sunday morning analysis on the futility of asking rugby fans in South Wales to switch club allegiances and the need for historic club neutral regions?  Or a piece on how to connect and extend from “Team Wales” to the grassroots in Welsh rugby other than through a regions system?   Or the exclusion of North Wales from the pro game?  Forget it.  They won’t be lapping those up over their cornflakes in the Home Counties.  Something about the English Test team or Saracens/Harlequins would do better, with an ancillary article criticising the WRU as the icing on the Anglo-Saxon reader’s cake.

So we end up with periodic banal commentary criticisms, especially of the WRU and usually ignoring the less topical regions and the clubs below, without any real analysis of the underlying structural and systemic problems and/or providing any meaningful proposed solutions.  And especially since regionalism in 2003 took many of them completely out of their comfort zones within club rugby and gradually (a painfully gradual process, for advocates of the full regional rugby package) in Welsh rugby towards an alien future landscape of wage structures, central contracting, anti-player stockpiling measures, player drafts and comprehensive geographical representation above the entire historic club game.

For these are journalists deeply ensconced in the bosom of the English pro club game outside of Regulation 9 windows, clubs who only (cheekily) have their own regional academies fully imported from the union regional model, with sentimental/nostalgic views of a long dead Welsh Merit Table club game, and with an obvious personal vested career interest in the Welsh game being more aligned with the English club game rather than with the Irish/Scottish regional game (even if they mostly realise deep down that an Anglo-Welsh club league has long been a non-runner, a contradiction they cannot easily resolve within themselves).

Their collective output from London on Welsh rugby issues, on rugby issues where individually and collectively they could have so much to contribute domestically, is what I openly call “lamentable“.  Inevitably so, for the structural reasons outlined.

(7) BBC Wales may still be the dominant rugby broadcaster in Welsh rugby, indeed competition from ITV Wales has now all but disappeared, but the rugby broadcasting dynamics within BBC UK have charged markedly since professionalism.

BBC England long ago lost coverage of the pro club game to the satellite broadcasters.  Rugby Special with Nigel Starmer-Smith is long gone, the “Holy Mackerel” theme tune belonging to another age.  BT Sport televise the Aviva Premiership, Sky Sports the Championship, both EPCR.  Terrestrial rugby in England in terms of live match coverage is a Six Nations and Rugby World Cup event.  There is limited non-Test terrestrial coverage in Scotland, mostly confined to BBC Alba.  And of course the BBC role in Ireland is limited to the Ulster province.  In Wales it is still a weekly regional event on a Friday evening (BBC2 Wales) and on a Saturday evening (S4C), not simply for only all home Welsh Tests.

A number of my non-Welsh friends complain that the BBC UK Six Nations TV coverage sometimes feels more like “BBC Wales, plus” rather than BBC UK.  That may or may not be the case, albeit BBC Wales is the residual base of rugby expertise and coverage, but this high regional profile does provide Welsh presenter and pundit opportunities at the UK level and outside of discussing the seemingly intractable and controversial internal structural issues within Welsh rugby and their impact on Test and non-Test results.

Which route would you choose, as a BBC pundit?

(8) And business relationships within rugby, including those of the BBC within Welsh rugby, have changed considerably with professionalism.  The BBC now pays many £millions annually to televise the Six Nations, Welsh Home Tests and Pro12 matches.

And readers must understand that the BBC Wales commercial relationship is exclusively with the WRU, even in relation to the regions.  Test matches the primary attraction, the Pro12 league very much secondary fodder.  As long as the “Team Wales” stars were contracted, one suspects that BBC Wales wouldn’t really care if the WRU entered the Vernon Pugh, Tasker Watkins, Cliff Morgan and Ray Williams Memorial XVs in the Pro12.  It wouldn’t significantly alter viewing figures.

Although regionalism, real or half-hearted or illusory, certainly suits the BBC’s internal requirements in relation to obtaining devolved national funding.  Approval for money to televise “the 4 Welsh regions“, or approval for money to televise “4 clubs along the South Wales coast“?  A “no brainer” in terms of internal BBC funding dynamics, one suspects.  No clues to a London non-rugby fan BBC executive from use of Blues, Dragons, Ospreys and Scarlets that much of South Wales is alienated from these teams and North Wales excluded from this national rugby heritage product.

One of the big problems for the 2018 Pro12 TV renewal is the continuing need to oxygenate the Welsh regions through a Friday evening match on BBC2 Wales.  Whatever amount is offered by Sky Sports, granting them exclusivity would not be an option.  The Welsh regions would be in cardiac arrest within months without some live free to air television.  We shall be returning to this subject, shortly.

The same general considerations apply to the close commercial relationship between the WRU and Trinity Mirror.

These commercial relationships do matter, and do impact upon editorial policies either consciously or sub-consciously.  That is just human nature.  Whether one views it in terms of courtesy to close commercial partners or in terms of “not biting the hand that feeds”.

(9) And finally, the Welsh rugby media of the 1980s did not have to compete with the diversity of the internet age and of social media.  I doubt that John Billot, David Parry-Jones and JBG Thomas would have thought much of having to interact with rugby fans via Twitter.  Or thought much of the instantaneous nature of the modern media age.  Ready to hit “publish” on match reports within seconds of full-time.  For all the best analysis comes from time and reflection, the very antithesis of modern commercial requirements.

I can remember chats at Pontypool Park in the 1980s with a wonderful rugby journalist called Arthur Trembath (or “Jack” has everybody knew him), a little rugby correspondent of the Rhondda writing match reports (I recollect) for one of the red tops in London.  Now probably long since dead.  Taking time to discuss issues with me, even if he was really after clues from me as to which 2nd class club players my father was watching and keeping an eye on!  Before I criticise a current journalist and refer back to any “golden age”, I always think what Arthur Trembath would have made of the life of a modern rugby journalist.  Not much, I both suspect and fear.  And I think how he would have viewed my specific criticism, in professional terms.

I occasionally and at leisure non-commercially write 2-4,000 word analytical essays on structural/systemic problems.  Not for pleasure, for I am far too saddened at the state of the game and by the pyramidal decline over a number of decades, but also not under any employment pressures.  I don’t daily have to commercially churn out 750 word reports almost instantaneously to the events I am reporting upon.  Good rugby journalism is not easy at the best of times, and these are very dark days indeed.  The outstanding Steve James being made redundant tells us that in itself.  No incentive whatsoever for intelligent youngsters to choose this career path.  Maybe a dying career path.

So, if the Welsh rugby media has failed in its duties at times in recent decades, it is also more about structures and systems at the macro level than about individual personalities.  Remember that, especially if you wish to interact with rugby journalists via social media platforms.  They have a difficult job that is getting ever more difficult, even if there has undoubtedly been collective failure.  A collective failure that I will at some stage be returning to and discussing further in respect of micro level specific issues.