Top Welsh businesswoman says WRU board should resign

Martin Shipton

One of our most successful businesswomen says Welsh rugby is facing a life or death crisis and the whole board of the WRU should resign.

Hayley Parsons, who founded the phenomenally successful Go Compare insurance website, has spoken to Nation.Cymru about what many see as the increasingly dysfunctional nature of Wales’ rugby ruling body.

She believes a new start is essential if our national sport is to be revived.

She said: “I’m a Cwmbran girl. I’m Welsh. I’ve only ever lived in Wales. Everything I do revolves around Wales and rugby has always been there for me. Go Compare is on the jerseys now. That was a really proud moment for me for a long time.

“I’ve done loads of different things within rugby, kind of linked to my businesses. So it’s a real pride and passion for me.

“I feel absolutely devastated at where we’re at. It actually makes me feel physically sick and makes me want to cry.

“One of the things I always do in the way I operate is have an idea or a concept. I’m a start-up girl, right? I have an end goal and then I work out how you get there with all the bits that move in the middle. That’s how my brain operates. And to do that, I always have to talk to as many people as I can. The plan is always changing as those conversations happen. I engage all the stakeholder groups at all levels to try and get a full understanding of things.”

She said that although she is a former director of Cardiff Rugby, she is not allied with a region: “I look at things from a business perspective. I want to see all four regions be successful. I want to see all four regions do well for our Welsh economy. All that should lead into Welsh rugby and it should just all work together.

“So I’m all about relationships and people. And if you can get the relationships and the people right, you can do great things. But they’ve never been able to do that. The relationships are so broken. They’re so toxic and they just don’t work together.

“ I had really strong beliefs that they needed to modernise the board and the structure they came up with three years ago. I was all for and and I’m still all for, I think the structure is right. I think the people were wrong and I think the strategy that they took at that point to build that board was wrong.

“They came at it from an aspect of, we’ve got to get diversity on the board. We’ve got to tick the diversity boxes. So yes, they brought in credible people on paper, but not necessarily the right people in the right roles to do the right jobs. Which, again, is something that I deeply believe in as a business person.”

‘Failed’

Asked what should happen now, she said: “I think we’re in the worst state we’ve ever been in. We can’t get away from the fact that this board over the last three years, collectively has failed. That is the situation we’re in. So we have to put people aside and personalities aside. This just has to stop.

“The most important things with a brand are trust, transparency, customer base, and product. They’ve got no control over those four things. They can’t build trust and transparency. It doesn’t matter how good they are individually. Now, from an external perspective, every single thing that they do, even if it’s right, it’s wrong. And they can’t change that.

“I do think there’s enough good people around in the rugby world and in the business world in Wales that could potentially come forward and steady the ship in the short term. You could start probably with a ginormous list of people that have a real interest and a passion, and they’re going to have good experience behind them. So quite quickly from that pool and lots of other people around, you could quickly build a board. You could quickly get the right chairman in, appointed for the right reasons, and then that person can start to build their board. And, you know, within six months you could do that.

“I think the fans might start coming back, they might start buying the tickets you sell at the stadium. I think quite quickly you can get some momentum around, start building trust and transparency. It’s not going to be easy. But it’s doable.

“Right now rugby is dying. We are all sitting here and watching rugby die before our very eyes. That is the situation that we’re in,

“The diversity should have come from the members on that board, in their skill sets, their experience, their challenges. And that’s where for me, it went really wrong. Now you have a group of people that don’t understand their product, they don’t understand the customer base. They don’t understand Wales. I think half the board don’t live in Wales.

“Something the union has always done through their whole history is divide and conquer. Where we’re at now is you’ve got the four regions all pitted against each other. You’ve got the fans all pitted against each other. And that is wrong. That has to change. They all have to stand united together against the union because ultimately these problems all come from the union.”

Business plan

Asked about the proposal to cut the number of regions from four to three, Ms Parsons said: “All anybody can have at this point is a personal opinion, because nobody’s seen any evidence. So as a business person, I can’t even comment on four, three, one, two, whatever. I’ve not seen a business plan. What I do know is the finances are in dire straits, and the finances are probably much worse than any of us realise. I also think this is such an awful mess that there is no right answer forward. There’s no magic bullet here. It needs a good group of people to try and figure out what the path ahead looks like, but they need to look at all the different paths.

“If you look back over the three years, that board was very firm for a long time, that there must be four regions. And then all of a sudden, oh, no, we can’t afford four it must be three. So did they get to the point where they thought dealing with four regions is an absolute nightmare. We can’t control them. They’re not going to do what we want them to do. So let’s just take one of them out because that will make our lives much easier.”

Dysfunction

Ms Parsons said the dysfunction in the WRU had to have had an effect on the pitch: “Doesn’t it have to have an effect on everybody that works in that business? In every business that I’ve been in, I am all about, you’re building something, you’re growing something. Work is a joy. You have fun. You put in the hours, you deliver something brilliantly.

“That is my basic foundation for everybody who works for me. But I just don’t see that in the whole rugby ecosystem in Wales. They are in a whole world of pain. There can’t be any joy in going to work. They must just feel physically sick every day in the work environment. And that is so wrong. You know, people should go into work. For me, I’ve always gone into work with joy in my step. Like, you know, what’s the day going to bring? Bring on the challenges. What are we going to build, deliver, produce today? But this is just drowning. This is just dying.”

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