Questions hovering over Blanc departure
ONE year, one month and one week after she left without a peep from the Welsh Rugby Union, their long silence over Amanda Blanc’s exit ended with a disturbing admission.
Nigel Walker, acting chief executive following Steve Phillips’ sacking, appeared before a Senedd committee of the Welsh Assembly in old Tiger Bay and made it sound as though he had gone into a confessional: “I think as an organisation we have been in denial as to the extent of the problem.”
In other words, they did what many long suspected about the recurring allegations of female employees being subjected to misogyny and sexism. Instead of confronting the problem, they swept it under the carpet in the pretence that it would stay there; out of sight and out of mind.
It created the impression of a Union hierarchy staying aloof in their ivory towers on the assumption that if they kept schtum, the matter would melt away. They turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to the reality, that the longer they said nothing, the more the public would smell a rat.
Reports had been swirling around in newspapers and clubhouses which ridiculed the Union’s supposedly cherished belief in family values. Charlotte Wathan’s distressing interview with the BBC Wales investigative team on her abusive treatment as the WRU’s women’s manager unleashed a tsunami of anger crashing over the Union walls.
Walker admitted that it hit the governing body like ‘a ten-tonne truck’. But what about the 12 members of the WRU board as it was constituted at the time?
Did not one of them feel that they, too, had been hit by a tentonne truck? If so, why didn’t they speak out publicly? Maybe they did privately and were warned not to rock the boat for fear of losing their privileges.
Walker joined the Union as its performance director in July 2021, four months before Blanc quit. A former Olympian and international wing, he told the Senned committee: “Each individual case has been an indication that there has been a wider problem of people not joining the dots.’’
Blanc, chief executive of the Aviva insurance giant and one of the world’s leading businesswomen, was installed as the independent chair of the Union’s Professional Game Board on December 20, 2019. She left on November 18, 2021.
Notice of her resignation appeared on the WRU’s official website without a single word of regret from the governing body, let alone an explanation. In marked contrast, the chairmen of the four regional teams sitting with Union executives on the same PGB,
“Those who said nothing to prevent her exit were part of the collective complicity”
issued an immediate statement regretting her departure.
“During her tenure,’’ they said. “Amanda has championed collaboration, co-operation, discussion and debate between the regions for the betterment of the entire professional game.’’
Gareth Davies, then WRU chairman, had acclaimed Blanc as bringing ‘a skillset of the highest level of business experience in the financial sector unrivalled elsewhere’.
His eventual successor, Ieuan Evans, ousted Davies in October 2020. “It is incredibly disappointing,’’ Evans told the Senedd. “That a woman of her standing had
to deal with some of the appalling comments and that she felt frustrated on behalf of our female players.
“I found her comments alarming and our response to date hasn’t been remotely enough. I cannot defend or excuse where we are currently at. I’d hope to reach out to her. I’d like to think that Amanda Blanc would give her opinions openly and honestly.’’
Why did nobody see fit to reach out to her at the time? Or, at the very least, attempt to intervene on her behalf ? They must have heard about what has since come to light of her resignation speech citing ‘insulting’ comments from male members and warning that the Union was sitting on a ‘ticking time bomb’ over its lack of diversity.
When she needed support, Ms Blanc got none, or least none that was ever put in the public domain. “You like to be able to make an impact,’’ she has said. “If you feel that you aren’t being listened to, you’ll move on. I do think change needs to happen.’’
Those who said or did nothing to prevent her exit were part of the collective complicity and yet only one head has rolled, the chief executive’s. The independent Task Force investigative team has much to investigate.
One of the more pointed questions to be aimed at WRU board members will require straight answers:
If you knew of the allegations of misogyny and sexism, did you not see fit to demand that something be done about it at any time during the months before Ms Blanc walked away in despair?
And if you knew nothing, then why not?