by In many ways, the announcement earlier this week that the favorite course of the Welsh Union of Rugby is a reduction in four professional male teams in two is hardly surprised.
There has been talk for some time, players being informed in recent weeks, it was the most likely option. Instead, these are the details beyond what has taken more guard this week. An influence of WRU on the side of rugby of things has not lowered well with club fans, while it remains to be seen how benefactors will feel that being responsible for commercial profits.
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However, it was the shared national campus that really shocked a lot. Few would have had two Welsh clubs and the national team that all trains under one roof on its bingo card at the start of the week.
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The director of Rurby and the Elite performance of WRU, Dave Reddin, later admitted that it was the part of their “optimal system” that he expected the most hindsight, beyond the argument with two clubs.
However, you meaning, it is the part which is the most excited by the former man of the football association. The shared campus, as he calls it, is “shamelessly a radical decision” – which aims “to create a defensive gap for Welsh rugby, it is a question of creating a competitive advantage in the future”.
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There are comparisons to do in St George’s Park, the impressive English football house – housing all their national teams.
Reddin, of course, is familiar with this, but the difference in his plans for a national campus in Wales is that he would not only house the national team, but potentially two male clubs – if the WRU’s favorite option to go from four to two arrives. Register for Inside Welsh Rugby on Subk to get exclusive reports and information behind the scenes of Welsh rugby.
“And the national academies and the development of coaches,” added Reddin on Wednesday when asked what this new campus would contain.
Overall, it would house male and female national teams and staff, male and female professional clubs and staff, national men and women academies, performance staff, commercial staff and development staff for coaches and referees.
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About 400 players and the staff, all in the same place. Where it would be, the WRU does not yet know. They could not give an estimated cost either.
“Once again, we worked behind the scenes,” said Reddin. “Capital financing is different from operational financing, and there are many different partnerships and opportunities if we are able to create something as inspiring as that.”
The WRU proposal considers that it is an “ambitious world class environment for rugby offering unequaled access to elite facilities”, adding that it would be a “generational investment in a house for Welsh rugby”.
For Reddin, this is how the collaboration and alignment of WRU on charge “in a small nation with” real proximity “. Similar campuses in New Zealand, Premier League football and Formula 1 were cited.
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But, while Reddin has found examples of similar facilities elsewhere, there is nothing like rugby. “We want to lead,” he said.
“We want to be in advance. If we sit here and say that the Ireland system is really good, then copy Ireland, do you think that will be enough for us to have what Ireland is doing right now? I won’t do it.
“So we have to continue to challenge ourselves. Let’s be courageous and lead rather than follow.”
Of course, sometimes things have not been done by anyone else for a reason. “Listen, there are a lot of examples through the story when things like it happened,” added Reddin.
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“When St George’s Park was offered for the FA, there was a huge amount of people who said it was just another Lilleshall. Why do we return to this kind of thing?
“And in the first years, people were really ready to criticize this. I think it became a lighthouse for football teams in England and the development of coaches and exceeded this.”
Of course, and it is difficult to escape the dominant repression against this idea, it is that St George’s Park – or any other copy of other sports that the WRU examined – do not make teams in competition against each other.
“Simply follow the story,” is Reddin’s advocacy. “We are trying to do something different here because we want a different future.
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“And my philosophy is that if we will copy people, we will always be late. It is therefore uncomfortable. I understand that we are putting things that are different and in some radical cases. And I think it is a good thing because I think people really want a radically different future.
“This is what I think that everyone agrees with vehement. We don’t want to continue performing like that. So let’s be courageous and have this conversation.
“We don’t want two teams to wear the same colors. These are two independent clubs in competition against each other with distinct identities living in a campus with shared spaces.
“They would have their own team rooms, their own changing rooms. But they could share a gymnasium, they could share a dining room, they could share other spaces and the environment allows people to bang themselves and have a conversation.
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“So, if we want to be the best in the world at the scrum and we really want to overeat this, how is it happening at the moment? People are from top to the highway, with formal meetings.
“How to improve this?” How will we realize faster?
“We have to look at the beaten track if we want to try to do things differently. We must be courageous enough to lead sometimes and do things that no one else does and do things that people think they are a little hazelnut or too different or too uncomfortable.
“I think it is really easy to sit there and say that it will not work. And what we will encourage people to do in consultation is just sit on the other side and say” how could it work? “We want to hear both sides of this.
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“People will raise reasonable objections. It’s good. What I want people to think, how could we keep this identity and make this concept work?
“Because we do not need to be repaired and says that it is 24/7 every day in this environment and never anywhere else. It is how to think in a creative way around some of these concepts that feel different, which could seem uncomfortable, but how could we make them work?
“Because on history, that’s how people have evolved, this is how the jumps were made that in the future, people look back and everyone does. But at the time, it was ridiculous. Why would we do that?”
Already, there has been skepticism on campus. Some do not even see him peeling off in the years to come.
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When it comes to a lack of identity, with two professional and rival clubs sharing a base, Reddin is categorical that two training centers do not really want to explore. “We did not just think with casualness that it was a good idea so let’s crack,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a choice to continue doing what we are doing right now, a reasonable choice.”
The argument that there would be a lack of competition was that both sides under one roof do not wash with Reddin. He says he wants a “creative tension”, but also an “inherent creativity”.
That said, the pressure on the players’ numbers and the finances that saw the four professional clubs, although useful, were not considered ideal. You can say that it is an extreme extension of this.
There is also the fact that the national Wales teams would also be in the building. Playing for your country should mean something more than your club – it is a position to which even those within clubs are subscribed.
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There should be a step. Last year, Wales was planning to pilot players to Japan in the economy for this summer tour, but it was someone in the clubs that convinced Warren Gatland that playing Wales should be the summit.
Does this step still exist if professional clubs are right in front of the corridors of the national team?
“We have just started to get involved with the group of players last night,” said Reddin. “We will have a number of meetings with players and we will listen to them very carefully.
“And of course, some of the things you mentioned in theory could be objections. With all this, we must test both sides. Inthematically if there is a good idea there, how could we make it work because no one wants to be in different regions at different times.
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“You can say that the Welsh national team may well be tired of training in Vale (de Glamorgan). It has been there for 20 years or other, so these things always need a kind of refreshment.
“But I don’t think that in the world, that’s the reason not to do something.”
During the next month, it is the argument that Reddin will present to the stakeholders in the middle of the hindsight.
Even then, beyond the many changes that will come before him, there is still a long way to go to go to the “defensive moat” of Welsh Rugby.
