Hayley Parsons has called on people inside the Welsh Rugby Union to blow the whistle on what she says goes on “behind closed doors”.
The GoCompare founder wants the whole board to go. She also wants chief executive Abi Tierney and director of rugby Dave Reddin to step down.
Writing on LinkedIn on Saturday, she said people inside the organisation or connected to it contact her every day, but are “terrified to speak out because of a toxic culture of fear”.
Her message to them was blunt: “If you are inside the organisation or the clubs and you see the damage being done, it is time to speak up, share your experience, and demand accountability. We need a complete clear-out before there is nothing left to save.”
Hayley Parsons says the WRU has lost £85 of every £100 it was worth in three years
Thursday’s accounts from the union showed a loss before tax of £18.1m in the year to June 2026, more than double the year before.
Parsons says the WRU group’s net worth has fallen from £44.2m to £6.8m in three years, a drop of 84.6%. The WRU’s own figures put it at £44.2m in 2023.
On Friday she wrote: “Let that sink in. For every £100 of financial value Welsh rugby owned when this leadership team took office, they have managed to lose £85 of it.”
The WRU is now “a global laughing stock”, in her words, and its results are “the sports business equivalent of a Gerald Ratner moment”. By her count, 82,000 tickets for international matches remain unsold.
Welsh rugby, she says, belongs to the nation and is “bigger than 12 people sat in the boardroom”.
Parsons lists the WRU match-day perks she says keep community board members ‘sweet’
In a longer statement on WRU governance, also posted on LinkedIn, Parsons claims community board members are kept “sweet” through “a highly effective hierarchy of perks”.
The list runs to two complimentary A tickets for every home international, two VIP hospitality tickets with access to the President’s Lounge, and two nights at the Hilton for home games. Away Six Nations matches come with tickets, flights and hotels, she says.
She is careful to add that one community representative told her they spend more than 100 days a year on WRU business, and that match-day perks for that unpaid work “you could argue is reasonable”.
Her target is the paid leadership, who she claims enjoy “business class flights, international five-star hotel stays, and full hospitality boxes covered entirely by the union”. She says the chief executive is paid more than £300,000 a year.
She also claims club and district representatives have told her that anyone who challenges the union risks being removed from WRU roles, banned from meetings or suspended from duties. “This fear is a heavy reality, and it has to stop,” she wrote.
New WRU chair Lyndon Faulkner has her backing, but Parsons wants clubs to force an EGM
Parsons says she is “incredibly supportive” of new chair Lyndon Faulkner, who will be leading the board by the union’s AGM on 22 November.
But she says he “cannot be expected to rebuild trust while sitting at a table surrounded by the leadership team responsible for this collapse”.
If the leadership will not go, she wants member clubs to “stop being passive, and force an Emergency General Meeting”. That needs 10% of the WRU’s 282 member clubs to call it, followed by a vote.
Hayley Parsons asks who approved the WRU’s £9.6m URC share deal
Earlier this week, Parsons also used LinkedIn to turn on a deal involving the WRU’s stake in the United Rugby Championship. The union’s accounts are reported to include £9.6m from selling URC shares to investment firm CVC.
ITV News reported that the four professional clubs, the Ospreys and Scarlets among them, found out only after the deal was done. The WRU told ITV it could not say more “due to commercial sensitivities involving other parties”.
Her questions for the union: “Who approved this? Where is the money going?”
The WRU board has refused to resign before, saying critics need credible alternatives
Parsons and Wales great Jonathan Davies both called for the whole board to go in August.
The board refused to stand down, saying the changes that created it were voted through almost unanimously by member clubs. Criticism, it said, had to come with credible alternatives.
Presenting the accounts on Thursday, chief financial and operating officer Gavin Marshall said the union’s priority was “to improve the WRU’s financial performance and return the organisation to a sustainable position”.
Parsons, a former Cardiff Rugby director, has been calling for change since February. That was when she urged clubs to remove then chair Richard Collier-Keywood.
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