Being a Welsh rugby fan at the moment is horrible. Really, really awful.
There is pretty much nothing to enjoy about it. Any attempt at conversation about matters on the field are overshadowed, even rendered pointless, by matters off the field. The inept, rudderless, floundering Welsh Rugby Union have dragged Welsh rugby fans to rock bottom and are currently in the process of bouncing their heads off it. Repeatedly. For about a year and a half now.
However, beneath trauma currently being inflicted on the men’s game, another, equally toxic narrative is festering. One where words and actions are poles apart, and the game’s most ignored community are being used as the fall guys. Or should that be fall gals?
Women’s rugby fans do not need me to speak for them. Indeed, whenever I do try to call out what I perceive as injustice towards the women’s game, I am usually informed by my friends: “Huw, it has always been like this.” The observations I have made, during the three-ish years I have followed the women’s game properly, are a drop in the ocean compared to the lifetime of lived experiences my friends have endured. However, as long as I have something vaguely resembling a platform, I might as well use it for something I care about.
The problem is this: there is currently a perception amongst some of the Welsh rugby community, most evident on social media sites such as Twitter, that the wrecking ball currently being taken to men’s rugby in the country has ‘because women’ inscribed on the side of it. The idea is that the slashes in funding headed the men’s way - including the plan to cut a region - are because the WRU want to spend the money on women’s rugby instead.
Go to any social media post of a Welsh women’s result - unfortunately, most are defeats - and you won’t have to scroll too far down to find a comment along the lines of ‘why are we are cutting a men’s team for this?’ and the reason people ask that is because that is what the WRU have allowed them to believe. Or, rather, that’s what they explicitly told them:
“Changes to the structure of men’s professional club rugby could create significant opportunities for the women’s game by aligning team structures and driving greater investment” - WRU consultation document
Any press release or leaked story regarding the men getting less and less is always accompanied by a paragraph or two containing promises of the women getting more and more. More money, more coaches, more teams. The picture this paints is of an organisation robbing Peter to pay Paul (or should that be Pauline? Paula? Never mind).
This has now evolved into a bad faith argument; the WRU appear to think they can guilt Welsh fans into accepting their vandalism of men’s rugby by saying it’s all in the name of women.
Don’t for one second think such a tactic would be beneath them - Since the union came under a co-ordinated attack from Hayley Parsons, Rob Regan and Jonathan Davies, they have deployed a string of distraction tactics, such as condemning ‘personal attacks’ rather than addressing the criticism directly.
Returning to the women, we recently saw one columnist casually suggest that unless a region was cut, the union might not be able to afford the women’s coaching roles it has advertised. The underlying message is loud and clear: “You want things for the women? Well then, you must be OK with losing things for the men.” This was not the first time such a message had been sent.
Ever since the stories of a regional cull emerged, well over a year ago, I have repeatedly heard the rumour that the region that loses a men’s team will receive a women’s team in its place. If you wanted to make an entire community resent women’s rugby, this would surely be the best way to go about it. I hope it’s just a rumour, but I have seen it in so many places, I fear it might not be. It would also be typical of the union’s insensitive and ham-fisted use of women’s rugby as a get-out-of-jail-free card.
We saw a classic example last week, when the WRU stated that one of their main reasons for rejecting Indigo Group’s offer of help to set up new academy pathways was because it gave little or no prevision for the girls’ game. On the face of it, this might look like a good thing. If Indigo’s proposition really did completely ignore half of the population of Wales, it should have been rejected. However, there are a couple of problems with the Union’s apparent moral stance.
Firstly, the so-called rejection came after Indigo had already gone public about the WRU ignoring them for several months. Ian Cole-Wilkins - the man behind the plan - stated in a LinkedIn post that what the WRU had rejected was only a preliminary draft and the bit about the girl’s pathway would be added later, which is probably true (probably… I’m sure… if you say so, Ian).
Secondly, the WRU’s objections over the lack of provision for the women would be a lot easier to believe if the Union themselves had done a damn thing for them in the past two years.
Way back in 2024 (which feels like a decade ago), when the WRU released its ‘One Wales’ PDF, it made all sorts of exciting promises for women’s rugby. Bringing top stars home from the PWR, signing top foreign talent for the Celtic Challenge teams, creating a women’s Super Rugby Cymru to sit beneath Brython Thunder and Gwalia Lighting… It was revolutionary.
“A thriving domestic community league which has become a breeding ground for professional Welsh talent, retaining and caring for that talent allowing a platform for the continued commercial growth of the Women’s game.” - WRU’s stated target for 2029
Understandably, lots of people were very excited by these promises. These actions would transform the Welsh domestic game from the bare minimum to arguably world-leading. However, some cynical fans smelled a rat. The proposals were so far removed from anything that had come before, so vastly improved compared to the status quo, that they read almost like a fairy tale.
Two years later, absolutely none of these things have happened. The closest we have come is the Joyces’ return to play Celtic Challenge, although that appears to have been instigated more by the couple’s own personal lives than by a grand Union plan. Contrast Scotland, where the SRU (rarely a shining light themselves) have made a huge noise about bringing back several top internationals to play for Glasgow and Edinburgh. They even got them new coaches.
“Parc Y Scarlets is where Brython Thunder is based and it’s literally 15 minutes from our house. It’s ideal. The older I get, the less time I want to spend in a car, so 20 minutes down the road, rather than two and a half hours, is ideal.”- Jasmine Joyce
It feels as though those promises for the women’s game were added in haste, after the authors had spent the majority of the time on the men’s bit. It was as if someone, maybe Belinda Moore, had asked a WRU exec, “What about the women?”, just as a meeting was ending, to which the exec had panicked and replied, “What? Oh, erm… Yes, the same, or whatever”, and then hurriedly left the room.
Moore was widely backed, by those in the know, as a force for good in the WRU, during her short tenure as Head of Women’s & Girls’ Rugby (her actual job title was never truly nailed down). However, she too had been susceptible to a gaffe here and there. The disastrous 2025 World Cup campaign, where Wales capitulated on the biggest stage women’s rugby has had to date, may well have caused lasting damage to the Welsh public’s opinion of the team, and yet, bafflingly, Moore refused to call it a failure.
“I don’t know what the WRU’s expectations for the women’s team was coming into this tournament. Three years ago, we got to a quarter final, so for me, as a Welsh person, a quarter final is a minimum standard. If the expectation of the WRU is to go out in the group stages, then it’s a sad state of affairs” - Ken Owens
When the WRU announced Moore was leaving her role, they said she would be responsible for finalising the next batch of central contracts for the national team. That was back in February, and whilst rumours from camp are that there has been progress on the contracts, nothing has been announced.
The rumour that the union may no longer be able to afford to hire more women’s coaches is outrageous. All bar one of the handful of job advertisements the WRU has posted for women’s rugby coaches in the last 12 months have listed a salary of less than £45,000. Remember, the Union has reportedly paid consultants £800,000, created two new senior management jobs both paying well over £100,000, and decided to continue its ownership of professional men’s side Cardiff Rugby indefinitely. On the flip side, if they genuinely can’t afford a few more coaches, how on earth could they ever afford that new women’s domestic competition they promised us all?
Misalignment between words and actions is nothing new in Welsh rugby, but the brazenness of it regarding the women is no less staggering. Perhaps most jarring is their messaging around the Celtic Challenge.
The Union has repeatedly identified competitiveness in the Celtic Challenge and the growth of that competition as key markers for success moving forward. What makes this odd is the fact that the Celtic Challenge was not originally a WRU initiative, but rather a World Rugby-funded project created primarily for the purpose of player development. For the WRU to now use it as the cornerstone of its entire women’s rugby strategy smacks of opportunism. Had World Rugby not made it for them, would there currently be any elite women’s teams in Wales?
Beneath the Celtic Challenge, there is essentially nothing. The squads for the season are announced two weeks before it starts and there is huge turnover in players across the 10 rounds. There is no good reason Wales should not have an equivalent of the inter-pros currently happening over in Ireland, to plug the 8-month gap between campaigns, yet the regions haven’t fielded women’s senior teams this decade. Once again: If Wales cannot even afford this, how can we ever believe the rest of the promises will be fulfilled?
Below that, the women’s amateur club season is disjointed and many fixtures get cancelled. In fact, the WRU even stated in their 2024 document that there was not sufficient demand to increase the number of rugby clubs offering female programs.
“Recognition that there is not yet the demand for all Welsh clubs to have a women and girls offering” - WRU ‘One Wales’ strategy
Furthermore, it is easy to forget that the WRU actually tried to offload the running of their two Celtic Challenge teams, Brython and Gwalia, to the men’s regions, a little over a year ago. However, the plan collapsed as soon as their intent to cut one of the men’s teams was made public. Not that they told us it had collapsed, though - we found out via a leaked internal memo that the plan had been ‘paused’.
“An internal email between senior WRU officials seen by BBC Sport Wales states the process has been paused ‘due to the ongoing transformation in the men's game’.”
No one ever really questioned why that pause had to happen. Perhaps we all just accepted that the high-ups were far too busy arguing about the men to even think about the women. If so, we should revisit that.
The consultation document made it very clear that regardless of how many men’s teams there were, there would only ever be two women’s teams, which is what we have already, both fully controlled by the WRU. There is also a women’s rugby leadership team at the WRU, which is separate to the team focusing on the men. So, what’s stopping them cracking on? That’s a genuine question.
Perhaps they want to wait and see what happens next with the Celtic Challenge’s attempted merger with the PWR. By the way, let’s not credit the WRU too much for that; it’s a joint initiative with Ireland and Scotland, and the Irish told us about it first.
Are they waiting until the branding is sorted out? According to the consultation document, a three-men’s-teams solution would mean those teams would have to submit a tender to have a women’s team attached to them. Perhaps that’s made awkward by the fact that the men’s region most closely aligned to a Celtic Challenge team (the Scarlets to Brython Thunder) is one of the two under threat of extinction. Anyway, surely it’s problematic for the WRU to oversee a fair tender process for women’s regions when they own one of the regions themselves (hang on, that sounds familiar…).
Either way, surely Brython Thunder could change their name to ‘Scarlets Women’ whenever they wanted, and the WRU could start the rest of the work in the meantime? To be fair, there are a few clues to suggest that the WRU might well be in the process of strengthening the two sides, ahead of a PWR merger, but for some reason they’ve opted not to tell anyone about it. Perhaps the press release got lost in the post?
Which brings me onto the Welsh rugby media, whose lack of scrutiny on these issues is a major motivator for me writing this piece. BBC Sport Wales are having their budgets slashed to the point where maintaining in-depth coverage is a real struggle. That said, their initial report of the Celtic Challenge/PWR merger was misleading, leaving fans to figure out the true picture for themselves.
Elsewhere, WalesOnline clearly see the women’s game as unimportant. It never features in the opinion pieces of their lead writers and they haven’t reported on the women’s team since the Six Nations. They were present at Wales’ double header against the Barbarians, but opted not to cover the women’s game. Had to beat the traffic, I guess?
Let’s get back to those who actually are challenging the WRU leadership, can we expect anything different from the likes of Hayley Parsons, Rob Regan & Co? The early signs indicate the opposite.
Both Parsons and Regan have suggested that a fundamental issue with the current WRU board is that it put diversity before competency. These words should be a red flag because, while it is very difficult to argue that those at the top of the union are competent, it plays into the unpleasant narrative that the problems are all because of woke. As we know, ‘women’ is woke.
Regan’s specific reference to the reforms going too far, post Dame Anne Rafferty’s damning review into sexism at the WRU, rightly drew suspicion. An article for Gwlad Rugby even went so far as to question whether Regan thinks that there are too many women on the board. Having now watched his interview with ITV, I don’t think that is the case, but it was right to ask the question.
“Many of the changes post-Rafferty were desperately needed and long overdue and directionally right. However, many of the post-Rafferty appointments were made for characteristics rather than capability and competence.” - Rob Regan
I am enough of a realist to understand why anyone coming into Welsh rugby right now would try to fix the men’s game first. It is because Wales men’s test matches are still, financially, the union’s core product. 85% of total revenue is the figure oft quoted as the scale of the disparity. But the question then becomes: when will the union finally get around to the women? A cynic might say that the past 100 years suggest ‘never’. Indigo didn’t even bother including it in their initial submission, for heaven’s sake.
The thing is, though: Wales cannot afford to put off building its women’s rugby program any more, despite what the would-be execs would like to believe. Women’s rugby is the fastest growing part of the sport and Wales’ rivals are making huge gains in alarmingly short spaces of time. There is a genuine risk of being permanently left behind.
The WRU cannot dispute this, because they dedicated multiple pages of their consultation document to explaining how rapid the growth of women’s rugby has been and celebrating record attendances.
Now, though, that progress has stalled. During the last Six Nations, England, France, Scotland and Ireland all played in front of record crowds, whereas Wales played their last game against Italy in front of 4,000 people. By the Union’s own logic, that is nothing short of a crisis.
The next team Wales face will be South Africa, to whom they haven’t lost in over 15 years. As recently as the World Cup in 2022, a Wales win would have been taken for granted. Right now, though, you’d be brave to bet against anything other than a comfortable Springbok victory. If that doesn’t show you just how quickly things are changing around Wales, nothing will.
I don’t think all hope is lost for women’s rugby in Wales. Ironically, it being right at the bottom of the WRU’s agenda has meant that the people currently running the show are actually passionate individuals who genuinely want to be there. Regardless of whether you think Sean Lynn is doing a good job (I think he is and I can back that up with stats), he genuinely comes across as a man on a mission to drag Wales out of the doldrums.
As I said, there are clues to suggest that the Celtic Challenge sides - under the direct supervision of Lynn - are being beefed up, both on and off the pitch. If the merger between the PWR and the Celtic Challenge does go ahead, then the Union will have nowhere to hide; Brython and Gwalia must either step up or be humiliated on a weekly basis (this truism runs dangerously close to that other depressing Welsh rugby trait of just hoping England comes along and fixes everything for us, but let’s park that for now).
In the meantime, though, the WRU must stop using the women’s game as something to hide behind whenever their plans for the men are raked over the coals. The portrayal of the men being victims of the women’s growth is absurd and downright nasty. Whilst the money may be coming from the same place, there should be clear daylight between the two work-streams.
Something everyone with even a passing interest in women’s rugby says is that the women should not be bound by copying everything the men do; they should be free to innovate on their own. Indeed, the consultation document even dedicates a whole page to how women’s rugby fans are different to men’s, and how this represents an opportunity for Welsh rugby:
“The fan profile of women’s rugby is considerably different to that of the men’s game, from ticket purchasers to how they consume the game across a variety of media platforms. There is a clear opportunity to grow and diversify our Welsh rugby audience through women’s rugby.” - WRU consultation document
And yet, the entire rest of the document argues that the two genders should have their rugby structured in exactly the same way. In real terms, that has meant women’s rugby in Wales cannot progress until the men’s game is fixed. A full year ago, Cymru Women’s Sport told the BBC of the damage this approach would cause, not only to women, but to rugby itself:
“We understand the WRU is going through a challenging time financially and organisationally, but it is disappointing the women’s game is affected again… Limiting the growth and development of the women’s game publicly and commercially while the men’s game takes priority will both continue to hold women and girls back and weaken rugby’s future.” - Cymru Women’s Sport
In Wales, then, it seems the women are shackled to the men by their own Union. If the women want change, the men must change first. If the men suffer, so must the women. How’s that for equality?
If you are or have been a women’s rugby player, please consider supporting this survey into concussion: https://cccuniversity.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_em5xasULkm4TkcC