Staging an impromptu press conference in the wake of Telegraph Sport’s investigation into how it mishandled contract negotiations was probably not how Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) chiefs expected to be spending their Friday afternoon.
Over the course of more than an hour, they apologised for the way it treated its women during lengthy, messy contract negotiations. They did so robustly and defensively.
It was so embarrassingly bad that at one point, the time on the free Zoom call ran out. A pointed reminder, perhaps, that the WRU has no money and that it desperately needs to drum up ticket sales in the upcoming autumn international window at a time when its men’s game is haemorrhaging cash and is beset with its own deep-seated problems. Or an apt metaphor for its general incompetence.
The WRU representatives spent much of the hour-long call profusely apologising. They said sorry for not treating their women’s players as employees.
They said sorry for the stress and hurt they had caused, the poor behaviour from management and for not having a “clear process with open dialogue.” But they also fiercely deflected claims that their treatment of its women amounted to any form of sexism.
What is clear is that the WRU has not learnt its lessons since an independent report was published last year, which delivered a damning verdict on its “toxic” culture.
A whole 36 recommendations were issued in the wake of that hefty 133-page document and the WRU is now preparing to implement another truck load of them after saying it would take “learnings” from its botched women’s recontracting process.
Soon this union will be buried in so many recommendations, measures and objectives you wonder whether you will be able to see it at all.
How did it come to this? The WRU looked to have turned a corner when Nigel Walker entered the helm and introduced historic contracts for its women’s team in 2022.
Walker has been credited for recognising the players’ struggles and listening to their needs, but what he and his colleagues have failed to grasp is how quickly the women’s game has grown even since then.
It is no longer good enough for unions to use the female game as a PR exercise, hand women professional contracts – some of which are just above the national living wage – and pat themselves on the back.
It is everything around that, from simple measures like ensuring players can access an expenses system so they do not have to pay for hotels out of their own pocket and not claim the funds back – a regular occurrence among female players who barely earn above the national living wage – to some of the more meatier demands like implementing a bespoke maternity policy that suits performance-based needs of its employees. Both of these are not unreasonable demands in most workplaces.
WRU had no answer to ‘sign here or else’ threats
The most shocking revelation, though, is how players were threatened with disciplinary action if they did not obey the union’s orders and sign on the dotted line. Surely, Wales men would never be threatened with forfeiting a World Cup if they didn’t sign what was being offered to them?
“That’s a very difficult question to answer,” said Richard Collier-Keywood, offering the most diplomatic statement of the century, when the subject was put to him.
But when you consider this is the same organisation that moved heaven and earth to prevent its men’s team from going on strike and forfeiting their Six Nations match against England last year amid contract disputes, the answer is really quite simple. Of course it wouldn’t.
But the most bizarre moment came at the end when Claire Donovan, one of the WRU board members on the call, said how pleased she was to meet those who cover the women’s game.
“Some of you I’ve always been very much admirers of in your journalism and I’m in the firing line the first time I meet you, which is a bit scary,” she said, with the air of a giggly teenager fangirling Taylor Swift on the other end of the line.
It just about summed up the WRU’s dire attitude to the whole saga. Yes, there’s a women’s game, and yes, the powers that be who fail to treat it with the respect it deserves will be held to account.
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