Phil Bennett: The Autobiography

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Then it struck me: this was the state Welsh rugby now found itself in. We had no world-famous players, so we had to make do with our administrators. This is what we now gave the world – law craft rather than rugby brains. Of course, it would have made far more sense to have had Gareth Edwards represent Wales and I’m sure Vernon would have much preferred it. He needn’t have looked so sheepish. But Welsh rugby had spent 20 years ignoring the seventies generation, so there was not much chance of their rediscovering it in time for the 1999 World Cup. To be fair, Edwards and a lot of other Welsh greats did indeed show their faces at the opening ceremony. But it perhaps sums up the past 25 years in Welsh rugby that a lawyer should have represented Wales that afternoon in South Africa. Legal wrangling and verbal dust-ups have certainly dominated over the rugby out on the pitch.

Vernon manfully did a difficult job heading up Welsh rugby in the 1990s. There often wasn’t much to be proud of, but he showed great negotiating skills and, unlike some of the men in suits in the game, I always felt he had a good understanding of the sport and the people who played and followed it. It was certainty a loss to Welsh rugby when he decided to step down as WRU chairman.

That left the way open for Glanmor Griffiths. Glanmor had been treasurer of the Union for a while and seemed to do the job just as you would expect any former bank manager. Nothing too flashy, nothing very imaginative, but he seemed to keep the small clubs happy and balance the books. Suddenly, though, this bloke was both chairman and treasurer of the WRU, and chairman of the Millennium Stadium pic. He clung on to all those areas of influence for a long time, which I always felt was wrong. Until he eventually decided to stand down from the WRU in 2003 he seemed unwilling to delegate, but you cannot give all that power to one person. It creates suspicion and grounds for resentment and mistrust. Glanmor had too many conflicts of interest for along time and I know of many other ex-internationals who felt the same way. Gerald Davies and Gwyn Jones were part of a Working Party that said as much in their report of 2001, but unfortunately not enough of the clubs in Wales backed that conclusion.

Had Pugh stayed on in Welsh rugby then I think he could have steadied the ship more successfully than has been the case in recent years. He was certainly far more of a forward-thinker than Glanmor. But I think he got fed up with the endless backbiting and low-level politics the game seems to attract in Wales. The committee men on the WRU have not changed. They are the same type of people who were running the game when I was playing 20 years ago. Wales were successful then and some have used that as a defence. If amateur committee men were in control in the 1970s, when Wales were successful, then their argument is that they can help Wales be successful again. But the sport has changed. Professionalism altered everything, and professionals now should run rugby as well as play it.

Glanmor likes to blow the trumpet for the Millennium Stadium and his own part in ensuring its construction. Hats off to him, for that one. It’s a great arena and the problems that have beset the Wembley project make the construction of such a landmark in the centre of Cardiff something all Welsh people should be proud of. Recently, however, the extent of the debts owed on the stadium and their impact on funding the rest of Welsh rugby have become apparent. I don’t profess to be a businessman, but there are deals tied up with the Millennium Stadium that worry me greatly. For instance, it’s great for Welsh prestige and self-esteem that the FA Cup Finals are being staged in Cardiff. The hotels, restaurants and shops in the city are also delighted, no doubt. But what is Welsh rugby making out of the deal? Not a lot, it seems. The FA was desperate for somewhere to go while Wembley was being rebuilt, but the stadium was handed over for virtually nothing. In fact, Welsh rugby had to offer up many of its existing deals to the FA! Advertising and sponsorship was handed over to the FA, along with the hospitality income and all the merchandising and other top-ups from normal match-day activity. It’s all very well having the richest customers come into your shop, but if they don’t spend anything and you end up paying them to come in off the street, then you’re soon going to go out of business.

The FA deal sums up a lot of what is wrong with the way the WRU has run its affairs. It was way behind the times when I finished playing and it has stayed there. Friends of mine who run successful businesses have given up trying to deal with the WRU. They are slow to react, complacent, and their marketing of the game is about 100 years out of date. There have been no sponsors for the domestic league for years, the Celtic League hasn’t had one either and companies are trying to disassociate themselves from the national team rather than be linked with it. When the RFU launch their competitions in England it’s done with some razzamatazz and a fanfare. In Wales there is hardly a whimper. Rather than turning people on to rugby, the WRU are constantly bickering with our top clubs and turning people off. They fail to applaud success stories at the top level – such as Newport’s wonderful reawakening of their community’s passion for rugby or Dunvant’s work with young kids – and arrogantly believe that they know best. The truth is that what general committee members know most about is ensuring their own survival. In short, the Union that Glanmor has presided over for the past few years has been a complete and utter shambles, a total disgrace.

In 2002 there was an opportunity for change within the WRU. A Working Party had been set up, chaired by Sir Tasker Watkins, the Union’s own president. Other respected figures were drafted on and they had spent two years considering the future of rugby in Wales, both on and off the field. Men like Gerald Davies, one of the greatest players the game has ever seen, worked hard at examining what had gone wrong and how they could fix it.

The report called loudly for root-and-branch reform, but after initially ignoring it Glanmor Griffiths and the rest of the WRU general committee then set about coming up with their own counter-proposals. Not only that, but they toured all the clubs in Wales in a peculiar sort of roadshow aimed at promoting their own plans and undermining Sir Tasker’s.

Just before all the clubs came to vote on both sets of proposals I flew to Scotland for the funeral of my great friend Gordon Brown and sat alongside Gerald on the flight. He was worried. He felt it was a last chance for Welsh rugby – that unless a small executive of professional people ran the game then top-level rugby in Wales would virtually die out. It was in the hands of every club in Wales to vote for radical reform and a fresh start. In fact, they voted against change and gave another chance to those who had failed them so often in the past. Glanmor’s blueprint, which called for cosmetic changes, was voted through and the Working Party was left to reflect on two years wasted.

The news of that vote came through to me on the day I was at Oxford watching Pontypridd lose to Sale in the final of the Parker Pen Shield. Ponty had defied the odds to make the final but they had enjoyed a magnificent run and proved that a modern approach, harnessed to young talent and expertise in the right areas, could bring rewards. Unfortunately, the rank-and-file clubs in Wales couldn’t see that the governing body was crying out for similar fresh thinking and new faces. They put their own self-interest first, which essentially boiled down to how much money they could guarantee themselves from the Union. In turn, that cash is put in the pockets of substandard players. The process is that which the Working Party was trying to get rid of. Instead of spending cash on players, most small clubs should be funding academies to bring through their youngsters. The Working Party debate was a massive opportunity for change, but it was scandalously rejected. The clubs should have seized it, but they dropped the pass.

On one level I can understand the clubs’ dilemma. They are ambitious and want to progress. That often means paying a guy a few quid more than they can really afford to stop him moving down the road. If a club tries to buck the trend then the consequences can be grim. Dunvant are a fantastic little club in the suburbs of Swansea. They reached the top division, built themselves a lovely little ground at Broadacre, and everything was going to plan. But instead of paying the top-level wages they chose to invest in their own youth and junior teams. Their mini-rugby sections are thriving and they are doing a fantastic job for the future of the game. But they recently lost a planeload of players to a rival team because they would not pay the going rate. As a result they are now dropping down the divisions like a skydiver in freefall.

It’s a terrible message that is being sent out; it encourages short-term thinking and reduces opportunities to develop the next generation of international players. Anyone who can’t see the destructive effect of all this obviously has no care for the future of our game. It saddens me, appals me and leaves me very pessimistic about what is in store for Welsh rugby.

At the other end of the scale are Newport, who have speculated to accumulate. Thanks to their financial backer, Tony Brown, the club were able to bring in big-money signings such as Gary Teichmann, the former Springboks captain and Shane Howarth who played for New Zealand and then Wales. It was a sound policy because it was backed up by a real drive for new young supporters throughout their area. They used their star names, like Teichmann, to sell the club to the kids and they wisely underpinned the strategy with clever marketing approaches to involve the whole family.

As a result, Newport have been the great success story of Welsh club rugby over recent seasons – certainly when it comes to attendances. They have tapped into something huge. The WRU could learn so much from Newport. If they had half the energy and enthusiasm of the staff at Rodney Parade then maybe Six Nations games would still be sell-outs and every kid in Wales on match day would be walking around in a replica jersey with a red dragon painted proudly on his face. But instead of encouraging Newport, the Union always appears eager to confront them. Instead of learning from their expertise they seem more keen to criticise guys like Brown and their chief executive Keith Grainger. Yet Newport were in exactly the same position as Wales find themselves in now – falling gates, falling interest, and a losing team. They responded in a dynamic way by getting youngsters hooked on Newport and hooked on rugby.

Without young kids coming through at every club in the country, there will be fewer and fewer players to choose our national team from. Without decent facilities for those youngsters to improve, the quality of our senior players will diminish. If the big clubs are also going broke because the marketing and administration of the game are so poor, then they will likewise go on a downward spiral – able to spend less on youth development, less on elite coaching and modern advances in sports science. English clubs are starting to move so far ahead of Welsh clubs in such areas that they are almost out of sight.

All these problems feed into a growing chasm between England and Wales on the international field – it being this widening gap that now concerns me most. England moved past Wales more than a decade ago and have been getting farther ahead of us ever since. In the last 13 matches between the sides, Wales have won just twice and on both occasions it was by a single point. More worrying still is that England’s winning margins have been getting bigger and bigger. The fixture is becoming seriously one-sided, a foregone conclusion. Perhaps it was a foregone conclusion in Wales’s favour in the seventies, but the implications for what was then the Five Nations were less serious. Back then, alternatives to the championship in terms of rival tournaments were simply not on offer. Now, big business, more air links and the growth in broadcasting and sponsorship mean things can no longer be taken for granted.

If England keep thrashing Wales, as they have thrashed us in recent seasons, then I worry seriously for the future of the Six Nations. Scotland’s decline has been as bad as Wales’s, and Italy continue to struggle. Ireland are just about holding on, but even they struggle away from home to either England or France. The tournament has not yet become a two-horse race, but it is going that way. The more predictable it becomes, the less it is going to appeal to sponsors and broadcasters. Who wants to watch mismatches and foregone conclusions? We have seen Lloyds TSB end their sponsorship of the Six Nations and when the TV contract was up for grabs in 2002 the BBC was the only bidder at the table.

The 2002 victory by England over Wales at Twickenham was one of the most depressing matches I have ever witnessed. It wasn’t just the defeat – I expected that – it was the complete lack of atmosphere either before the game, during, or afterwards. Everyone inside Twickenham knew what the result would be. The only question was the size of the winning margin. In the end it finished 50–10 but it could have been a whole lot more. I felt relieved it wasn’t 80 points, but the reaction of the English fans left me dumbstruck. There were no noisy celebrations, no goading or even much satisfaction. It was as if they had beaten Italy or Tonga – a job had been completed but that was about it.

I know England have failed to pick up the Grand Slam by losing to Wales, Scotland, Ireland and France in successive seasons, but the Celtic countries cannot sustain their challenge at present. They can rise to the occasion once every few years, but that’s not really good enough. My big worry is that England will soon get a better offer to go off and play the Tri-Nations countries. For TV companies an annual tournament featuring New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and England would be very appealing. The French might then have their loyalties tested and it would not surprise me if they went, too. That would leave Wales, Ireland and Scotland on their own and in a real mess. I can’t think of too many companies who would break the bank to sponsor a Celtic Tri-Nations featuring three also-rans. Income for Wales would plummet and it could be the end of any hopes of ever getting back among rugby’s world elite.

I had a frightening vision of that kind of future when Wales lost at home to Scotland in the final match of the 2002 Six Nations. It was an awful match between two poor sides. There were empty spaces in the Millennium Stadium at the start and thousands more were streaming out before the end. Steve Hansen, who took over from Graham Henry as coach midway through the season, looked a deeply troubled man and he had every reason to be.

Wales, and Hansen, finished the 2002 championship with just one victory, at home to Italy. We were dreadful at Twickenham, plucky in defeat against the French, but awful against Scotland and simply pathetic in losing heavily to Ireland in Dublin. I hesitate to say that record defeats to England and Ireland represented a new low, because there have been so many other low points to choose from, but it certainly felt as though we were bumping along the bottom.

It’s been a painful ride and I have more bruises than I care to count. But for those men in charge of the Welsh teams over 20 years of decline it’s been absolute agony.