Kiwi coach Warren Gatland’s triumphant return to Wales has encountered immediate and serious difficulties in the form of two heavy Six Nations defeats and a contract dispute which may see his players take strike action and pull out of the lucrative Test against England in Cardiff a week on Sunday.
The chaotic chain of events are probably related and would not be what Gatland, the former Chiefs director of rugby who announced late last year he was returning to coach Wales, had envisaged.
According to reports in the United Kingdom, the top Welsh players were offered reduced contracts on the eve of their 34-10 home defeat to Ireland which they followed up with a 35-7 defeat to Scotland at Murrayfield last weekend.
They have apparently been offered 80 per cent of their current contracts with the rest potentially made up with winning bonuses. Compounding the issue is that the new contracts do not apply to the national union’s coaches or staff.
Morale is at an all-time low, and should the players agree to and follow through on their threat to sit out the Test against England, Wales’ most lucrative on the Six Nations programme, it would send the Welsh union into further financial chaos.
Respected former Wales captain Sam Warburton revealed the depth of the players’ feelings in his recent column for The Times.
“The players clearly do not feel valued by the WRU and that has affected their performances on the field, and I can see why,” Warburton wrote.
“I would be the same. They will be thinking: ‘Why are we busting our guts and putting our bodies on the line just to line other people’s pockets when we are expected to take pay cuts?’
“I know from speaking to some of them this week that this issue has been really bugging the Wales players, and the feeling is so strong that the threat to strike is very real.
“They feel like they are, for want of a better expression, being shafted. So, I totally support the players and their threat to strike should some sensible agreement not be reached. If I was still playing, I would not sign these new contracts.”
According to a report in the Daily Mail, the current financial plight of Welsh rugby can be dated back to the pandemic, when the WRU took a $NZ40million loan from the Welsh Government. The money was handed out to the regions and without it, they would not have survived.
But each of Dragons, Cardiff, Ospreys and Scarlets have to repay their $NZ10m share over 20 years with an annual interest of 10 per cent.
To complicate matters, the WRU’s 60-cap rule means that only players with that number of appearances or more can play domestic rugby outside of Wales and also represent Gatland’s side.
It means many Welsh players may simply sign overseas contracts and rule themselves out of selection for the national team.
Warburton said in his column that he suspects Gatland would like the 60-cap rule to go.
He also wrote that he and his fellow players had threatened to pull out of warm-up games for the 2011 World Cup due to contractual issues.
Gatland replaced fellow New Zealand Wayne Pivac, who was sacked after a disappointing November series.
Gatland, 59, had previously coached Wales for 12 years, completing his first Six Nations clean sweep in his debut season, before repeating the feat in 2012 and finishing the same way in 2019.
He returned to New Zealand after the World Cup in Japan that year – initially as Chiefs head coach and then the franchise’s director of rugby after he coached the British and Irish Lions in South Africa in 2021.
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