The Maths Of Pro Rugby – Wales is Skint

Warning - the following will contain numbers, some limited assumptions and some rounding up. It won't appease the romantics, the disenfranchised or the lovers of compass point teams (you know the people - those who never use numbers to support their opinion. Last year the WRU earned (turned over) £85.3m. It also collected another £11.7m...

2+2? 3+1? How about a meritocracy instead?

So it's tomorrow and Wednesday that will see meetings of the (new) Professional Rugby Game Board to decide how the financial pie of Welsh rugby is to be divided, for an unknown period of time and in an unknown way. Let's remember that the PRGB is supposedly made up of 4 x PRW reps (the...

3+1

As the WRU has spent 15 years (and longer) trying to drive private finance out of the game in Wales, it seems to make more and more sense to go to a 3+1 model. Buttress is playing at being Chairman of the Dragons (in this context) as he's spent next to nothing of his own...

One Night in Bilbao

Before the next season starts, it's always worth reviewing the end of the previous season and, for Cardiff Blues, it ended in an extraordinary fashion. Now, winning cups is nothing new to a Cardiff Rugby fan of a certain age but there was something different about beating Gloucester in Spain. Firstly, Gloucester were favourites with...

John Mulvihill’s first week

Swapping life on the Gold Coast for the wonders of Cardiff can't have been an easy decision, but JM seems to have done his research on Cardiff Rugby. An assured performance in his first media conference has given the supporters an insight into the game plan he wants to use and how he's very much...

Chasing the Punter

There is a lot of narrative in Welsh rugby about two of its core issues: crowd sizes and money. The less well informed look at crowd sizes in Ireland (well, in Limerick, Dublin and Belfast) with little comprehension to the size of the market and automatically assume that we in Wales should be able to...

U-Turn if you want to

It's not boring being a Cardiff Rugby supporter. Whether the team on the pitch is trying to run in tries from everywhere or whether the board is trying to work out whether its a property development company or a rugby club, things rarely stand still for long. Indeed, there are more jinks to come in...

Double Speak, Misrepresentation, Half Truths, Rumours and Nonsense

Phil‏ @rugbyPhilBB  July 1: Blues come under "control" (somehow) of WRU. Temporary / permanent remains unclear & unknown. Detail shrouded in unnecessary secrecy The above is a tweet I sent at 11:16 on May 9th, 2017. It’s a tweet that I’ve wanted to send for many weeks / months but had to wait until Peter Thomas let...

The Duplicity of the WRU

When the last Chief Executive was pushed out of power there was a chance, a hope, a light at the end of the tunnel for professional and community rugby in Wales. There was a glimmer that the WRU would finally become a professional organisation that understood its customers, understood its market and could push rugby...

The Lease

Many rumours are flying around the world of Welsh rugby as to the future of ownership of Cardiff Blues, some of which are more accurate than others. The world of Cardiff Blues is, at best, a complicated place that leads many to come to the wrong conclusions, so hopefully the following will shed a little...