Shame on Welsh for All Blacks date
The “Sold Out” signs have gone up for New Zealand’s visit to the Principality Stadium this month, and it is fair to say that the message is multilayered.
Firstly, and proudly, it signifies the Welsh public’s enduring fascination with its national rugby union team, which flies in the face of its equally remarkable indifference to the domestic game.
Second, and unashamedly, it pours fresh and emphatic light on the Welsh Rugby Union’s abandonment of its espoused cause. The Wru-ination of the sport in one of its hotbeds has long been a joke, but this time it has truly surpassed itself. It has arranged the stupidest fixture ever.
Actually, scrap “stupidest”, as this is offensive to the paying fans, who have dished out up to £95. Some accountant genuinely thought it acceptable to play the world’s best team while knowing that, on Oct 30, head coach Wayne Pivac would be without some of his most notable players. What is yet more scandalous is that those at the top agreed.
Unlike the three Tests on the weekends thereafter, this, the glamour tie, is being contested outside the international window. So, among other absentees, Dan Biggar will be with Northampton, Louis Rees-zammit with Gloucester and Taulupe Faletau with Bath. Wales will be understrength, and the only ones who will be fully loaded that day will be the libated portion of the 74,000-strong crowd.
“Well, why not?” the WRU might have surmised. Wales have not beaten the All Blacks in 68 years, since Tenzing and Hillary were still making their way back down Everest, and despite being reigning Six Nations champions, there would hardly be unfettered optimism that the Pivac party might finally conquer their own particular mountain.
That gullible, romantic bunch of daffodil-clad daftees will not moan if the void lasts at least another year. What is another 12 months in a whole lifetime of failure, what is another digit in a curse? Except it is not a curse, because it has reached the stage where the WRU, laughably referred to as “the governing body”, is actively making it harder for its side to achieve a feat they find impossible anyway.
The pandemic dictates that the WRU is more desperate for money than ever, and before Covid-19 it would invariably jam in another autumn international. If you want to see how four goes into three, then simply peer down recent Welsh schedules. Former coach Warren Gatland went along with it, saying exposure to the top sides was crucial and, well, as altruistic members of that ever-inclusive international fraternity – quiet at the back – Wales should play nations such as Fiji, shouldn’t they?
If and when Wales ever beat New Zealand again, it will be a moment many of us have waited for since the seeds of our oval-ball obsession first sprouted.
Wales have defeated South Africa, Australia and, on occasion, Fiji, but the Kiwis are the scalp we crave. They should not be first up, in the unofficial slot. It demeans the occasion, which is a crying shame because it is difficult to quantify what it could mean to the country.
Certainly, such a seismic, generational victory could help drive a domestic game that is on the barest bones of its backside. There were just over 5,000 at the Ospreys v Cardiff derby on Saturday night. The two biggest cities with an assortment of Welsh rugby’s biggest stars? Newport County get more.
But now, the All Blacks will show up, the stadium will be packed and the tills will ring to the strains of Bread of Heaven. Sure, the visitors will run out comfortable winners – plucky performance by Wales, though – but at least a few debts will be paid and so the farce continues. Yet for how long and to what purpose? Keep prioritising the bottom line over the try line and Welsh rugby will soon be
bankrupt regardless.