The State We're In
By Zippy
December 7 2004
Taken from the Pontypridd match programme on Saturday. Professor Dai Smith of the University of Glamorgan takes a look into the state of the game in Wales.
In Welsh rugby nowadays there are several kinds of Fact. There is the actual Fact that a rugby culture of unparalleled richness, incomparable tradition and thrilling potential has, at the topmost level, been killed off in the Valleys of South East Wales. There is the pre-ordained Fact that the Great Business Plan always dreamed of only four professional rugby entities and lo! it has come to pass. There is the specious Fact that these entities are called Regions since Clubs apparently no longer exist in this stratosphere. There is the obvious Fact that the animal shapes or colours which are draped over these entities scarcely disguise the shape of the located Clubs they remain. And there is, for the WRU, the unpalatable Fact that the whole accountancy-led structure totters on the spin of a cowed media and the reality of a disaffected supporter base.
For spin just think of how honest, plain-spoken Jonathan Davies, has blurted out Neath when he sees the black jerseyed Ospreys on whilst those missionaries to the North remain what they always were, both Scarlet and Llanelli. Jonathan was practically gagged on air for saying as much by his more politically correct co-commentators. And someone would dearly love to wash out with soap and water the mouths of those incorrigible Black and Amber fans who embarrass the screen and its fiction writers with their defiant and majority chants of "Newport! Newport!" And before anyone from BBC Wales claims outraged innocence let me add that as a former Head of Programmes at BBC Wales, I know an editorial gag and a WRU request when I see one. It is the same tactic regularly employed by the WRU to move the world on to its own desired position: if you don't support what we are doing to the game you can't really support Wales so you must be unpatriotic and a wrecker. They've written the future of Welsh Rugby from the script of Orwells 1984 sieved through the copy-cat logic of the Western Mail.
The past is, however, another, and untouchable, country. In its outlines we may still discern a different future. History shows us how rugby in Wales flourishes when it relates to an actual society not a marketing blueprint. Even at a marketing level, as Coca Cola quickly discovered, the real thing is the real thing is the real thing. Detailed analysis of supporter loyalty by University of Glamorgan turns up the same three cherries over and over: location of place, location in the memory, location by the mind. In other words that concatenation of place, generations, traditions and drams which Rugby once meant in Wales and still means in France and in England. We are being made to fit into a social and cultural pattern which is alien.
We cannot, of course, just restore the Past but we can still be guided by its best values. We could start by embracing again honest-to-goodness Club rugby at the top level. We could correctly insist that Welsh rugby financially, demographically and in playing terms can and must support six Clubs. We should sympathise with the absurd position into which Cardiff has been forced under their ludicrous soubriquet of Blues and release them to be uniquely the Capital's Club. We must then continue to explain patiently to the bottom-line guys that the current neglect of the rugby population of Mid Glamorgan the biggest by far in Wales will ensure the terminal decline of Welsh rugby as the national game, a few isolated international successes notwithstanding, within a decade. We must not be silenced by brute force into accepting that this argument has ever been lost. In argument we remain undefeated. If regional rugby delivers a consistency of performance at international level then that part of our opponents' case would need to be conceded; if it does not and if the present player crop so many from Ponty amongst them is not replenished from the base then, in turn, we should expect just as open and as gracious an acknowledgement. We'll see.
Professor Dai Smith
University of Glamorgan