My Welsh Rugby Roots

I was born in Newport in 1969, so I will not try to go back further in time than that. I became aware of rugby at a very early age. My Dad was from Cardiff but was a former player at a very amateur level in Magor. I obviously have no recollection of the 1971 Grand Slam, but of 1976 and 1978, I have very clear memories. My favourite players would have been Gareth, Phil, Gerald and JPR. I was a little too young to appreciate the merits of the great forwards of the era. I started playing myself when I went to Bassaleg Comp in 1979. We had great coaches there, including Marc Batten and John Rawlins, both of whom were regularly playing for Newport RFC. Along with my long-suffering older sister, I became a regular at Rodney Parade. We did not play glamorous rugby in those days, but we were hard. Like my Dad, I played hooker and Mike “Spike” Watkins was my absolute hero. The Newport front row was fearsome – Spike, Rawlins, Rhys Morgan and the aftershave drinking Colin Smart. I loved them all. I saw a lot of Wales international games in those days as well – £3.50 for a ticket to the children’s enclosure in the East Terrace. What an education that was!

I moved to England (Birmingham) in 1987 to go to university. I watched the last couple of seasons of the Moseley club before they were destroyed by financial irregularities. I tried to stay in touch with Newport, but pre-internet it was not easy. I would see results and read the Argus when I visited my Mum, but that was about it.

I still live in the Midlands of England, but now that my kids are grown, I can afford to indulge my love of Welsh rugby. I have been a season ticket member of both Newport RFC and the Dragons for the last 5 years. I go to as many games as possible – for Newport, that’s home and away. For the Dragons, it’s mostly Rodney Parade. URC away games almost always need a passport. I think I drive something like 5000 miles a year watching Welsh rugby. I am a fan and I sink a lot of money into the system. I bought a campervan and toured France with the Wales team for the 2023 World Cup. Of more interest to the WRU, I do continue to pay the ludicrous ticket prices for the international games – even when I know we will be murdered. That’s not fun or sustainable, but I am not and never have been a fair-weather supporter.

Professionalism

In 1995, Rugby Union became a professional sport. At that time, the sport in Wales was run by a

bunch of committee men with no commercial experience at all. They were ex-geography teachers or councillors. Well-meaning, but not qualified for the professional era. . The club structure that was in place in those days was equally ill equipped for professionalism. The fixtures and league structures were very informal, but we did have much cherished games with teams over the bridge. Trips to Gloucester, Bath and Bristol were a lot of fun.

In 2003, the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU), advised by a complete arse called David Moffett, decided that the club system was not fit for purpose in the professional era. They probably had a point, but the cack-handed way that the move to five professional “regions” was handled alienated huge numbers of supporters. Fans of Swansea and Neath were suddenly expected to be best mates. In my region, Newport fans were expected to get behind the “Gwent Dragons”. It was not easy. Other regions managed to retain much of their club identity – The Scarlets were effectively Llanelli. Cardiff Blues were… Cardiff.

After a year or so, Celtic Warriors went bust and Dragons got “Newport” into their name, at least for a bit. That was the only way that season ticket sales could survive.

The Dragons

I reluctantly accepted the Dragons into my life, though retaining a keen interest in Newport RFC. Newport was completely shafted in 2017, when they had to give up their share in the Dragons and the Rodney Parade ground to the WRU. There are many Newport supporters who still detest the Dragons and that is even more true in the Gwent valleys.

Despite that, the Dragons have built up a loyal support. Come and stand in the terrace on a derby day. There is passion and loyalty. A brand has been developed over 20 years or so. David Buttress – co-owner of the Dragons and a man with a proven track record in big business – became a local hero when he finally got the Dragons out of WRU ownership, rebranded us as Dragons RFC and made the home kit Black and Amber. Success on the pitch still eludes us, but we have hope. Maybe it’s the hope that kills us, but hope is better than nothing.

Regional Success

Let’s be honest – as a Dragons fan, I have seen very little success. We did have some good times with great overseas players like the Springboks Percy Montgomery, Rod Snow and Brock Harris. We got to the quarter finals of the European Challenge cup in 2006, but we have never pulled up all that many trees.

However, during that time, other regions were successful. The Ospreys in particular with a string of Welsh internationals won a load of silverware in their first few seasons.

Wales Performance During the Four Regions Era

The whole object of creating the regions and effectively demoting the historical clubs – Pontypool, Newport, Swansea, Neath, Pontypridd and many others – was to equip the Wales national team with players capable of playing at an intense level. On the face of it, that would seem to have worked.

I loved Sam Warburton as a Wales and Lions captain, but his championing of the reduction of regions in Wales in recent years and especially pointing to the Dragons as the obvious fall guys has really pissed me off. In 2025, he claimed that he had 20 years of evidence that regional rugby in Wales has not worked. However, in those 20 years since the creation of the regions, Wales have won the Six Nations on 6 occasions, including 4 grand slams. That is a fantastic record. By comparison, the two decades from 1970 to 1989 yielded 5 Championships and 3 Grand Slams and that was the Five Nations. During the regional rugby era, Wales have also reached the semi-finals of the World Cup on two occasions. In 2019, we were top of the world rankings. That’s not that long ago. Regional rugby has worked for Wales, whatever Warburton might say. By the way, he was captain of Wales for many of those successes. Odd that he should think that system was such a failure.

This thinking that regional rugby has failed the national setup has become pervasive, but it is simply not backed up by the evidence.

Further Reductions in Wales Regions

A lot of pundits, including Warburton, as described above have been pushing for a reduction in the number of Welsh professional teams. The idea is that we cannot fund four professional regions at a level where they can really compete. It is certainly true that the Welsh teams have struggled to make a mark in the URC or recent European cup competitions. It is absolutely the case that the playing budgets for Welsh regions is much lower than for many other teams in the URC. The WRU has expected each team to have a “benefactor” who piles loads of money into the team. At the same time, the WRU has been comfortable taking loans on behalf of the teams to cover covid, to invest in hotels and has generally lost sight of what they are for.

In their new view of the world, they still want money from benefactors, but they want all the control. From the Dragons perspective, why would David Wright, David Buttress and Hoyoung Huh – all very successful business leaders – cede control to the rank amateurs running the WRU? Buttress just spent years getting the Dragons back into private control at no small cost.

Emotion In Sport

As you may have gathered, I get quite emotional about sport. I have been in the stadium for Grand Slams and they are good times. I think my single best rugby memory was the Gareth Davies try against England at Twickenham in 2015. I threw my best mate Steve up into the ceiling of the pub we were in. Steve’s dead now (pancreatic cancer), but that’s my favourite memory of him.

My point is that sport is an emotional business. Arguably there is no point in sport without emotion.

Dave Redding has just picked up the reins as Director of rugby at the WRU. In a recent interview with Lauren Jenkins on Scrum V, he acknowledged the role of emotion in Welsh rugby and called it a strength. However, he then went on to say

“I think we’re now making the right decisions at the right time. I think in any walk of life you’re always going to wish you’d done things earlier but we’re doing it now and we want people to really engage in it. And I’d just say encourage people to try, as hard as it is because it’s emotional that’s why we love the game, try and let go of some of the emotion and really cold-bloodedly analyse what we’re saying here and think about it in the round about what we want a system to look like in the future that we can all be really proud of”.

So we are supposed to be emotional for the national team, but not for the regions, which are just a means to an end. I don’t think so Dave. That just won’t work. Why would I spend £400 a year on season tickets and travel thousands of miles unless I am emotionally engaged?

I accepted a new region into my life once. It was not easy, but we play in Newport and have ties with the Gwent clubs. If I am expected to switch to another entity – presumably a team called East Wales, based in Cardiff, then I will just tell them to go and fuck themselves. I will continue to follow Newport RFC. That’s in my DNA. I might also look at clubs more local to me – Worcester have just been revived and have added ex-Dragons player Will Reed to their squad, as well as the great, though aging, Lloyd Williams, whose cross-field kick led to the Gareth Davies’ try I described earlier as my favourite rugby moment.

I don’t mean any of this as a slight to Cardiff supporters, or indeed to supporters of any of the other regions. With a few toxic exceptions on social media, fans of regions are actually closer than might be expected. Most of us want our regions to continue, but that does not mean we want other regions to be scrapped. The regional derbies are the best bit of the URC – a league created to make away support almost impossible.

I’m not certain, but I do think that my willingness to spend big money attending internationals will also be affected. I will always be a Wales supporter, but I would hate to fund a WRU that had just destroyed my team. I have not yet bought tickets for the autumn games.

Big Yellow Taxi

In the words of Joni Mitchell, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”. Ask the people of Bridgend, Neath and Pontypridd what they think of supporting a team in Swansea or Cardiff. These areas have effectively been disenfranchised from professional rugby. Are we really about to do the same to Swansea and Newport – the 2^nd and 3^rd biggest cities in Wales? The lesson of history is that when we take away a region, it will never come back. If we reduce to just two regions, then that will be the peak of our ambitions for evermore. The only direction is down. Do we reduce to a single team – effectively the National team – competing in the URC? That’s the ambition that Georgia has. Wales has a rich rugby history – we were #1 in the world just six years ago. We must be more ambitious than this. This is a big decision and one that cannot be undone if it fails. I urge the WRU to think again and get this right.

#FOFO