WRU: Swansea council leader likens licence report to counting fans’ Ninja airfryers

Swansea’s council leader has dismissed the evidence behind the WRU’s licence decisions as “selective criteria, poor data and questionable assumptions”.

Cllr Rob Stewart said the measures in the union’s newly published Keystone report had about as much to do with success on the pitch as counting airfryers.

He wrote on Facebook: “They may as well have included measures like ‘We looked at how many Travelodges are in a 10 mile radius of Ikea’ or ‘How many supporters own a Ninja airfryer’ for all the relevance to Welsh rugby success the chosen data measures have.”

The Welsh Rugby Union published the report on Friday alongside its board’s reasons for handing Cardiff and the Dragons two of its three licences from the 2028/29 season.

It puts the Ospreys bottom of Wales’ four professional clubs on revenue and crowds, but top on results since 2003/04.

“A trap we can’t fall into”

The report’s release was “aimed at getting the regions arguing with one another”, Stewart said.

He added: “It’s a trap we can’t fall into. It’s meant to distract us!”

That leaves the Ospreys and the Scarlets competing for the single west Wales licence. The union says it will announce the outcome by the end of June 2027.

The summary published alongside the report was “selective in its extracts”, he said, urging people to read the full report.

Swansea Council’s legal action “continues”

In July, when the first two licences were handed out, Stewart complained they had been announced “without any consultation or publishing any supporting evidence”.

Now that the evidence is out, his message is the same. “This does not change the key points! Our legal action continues,” he wrote.

The council paused its High Court challenge at the end of May after the union said no licence decisions had been made. In August it said it was resuming the case, saying assurances it had been given were broken.

Swansea Council has committed £5.1m to rebuilding St Helen’s as the Ospreys’ home.

What Keystone found on Swansea and Llanelli

In July, Stewart argued that Newport and Cardiff were the natural pair to merge, with the Ospreys and the Scarlets kept apart in Swansea and Llanelli.

Keystone’s drive-time figures show more overlap in the west than the east. It found 68.4% of premises in the west Wales cluster are within a 30-minute drive of both St Helen’s and Parc y Scarlets, against 47.7% for Cardiff and Newport.

The WRU board said it gave more weight to factors unlikely to change, such as population and accessibility, and less to results and finances.

“Unfit to continue”

A well-run union could keep four teams, the council leader said. He wrote: “We know if the WRU is run effectively it can support 4 successful regional teams in Wales.”

He repeated his call for the board and chief executive Abi Tierney to go, saying they were “unfit to continue and should resign”.

The union needed “new leadership that can grow Welsh rugby and create an environment to make the game successful again at all levels”, he said.

What the WRU says

The WRU says openness and transparency are “a vital part of the process”, and that its new website will be updated as the licensing process develops.

It says it has about £20m a year for the men’s professional game, and that funding four clubs at £6.5m each is “unsustainable beyond 2028”.

Its next step is a “State of the Game” summit in early December for the boards of all four clubs and the union’s leadership.

Author

Kit Peters

Kit Peters is a journalist and the editor of Swansea Bay News, covering Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Carmarthenshire since 2020.